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I, Citizen of Eternity 



B Y GER TR UDE SANBORN 

BLITHESOME JOTTINGS 
A Diary of Humorous Days 



/ 



5 

CITIZEN OF 
ETERNITY 



A DIARY OF HOPEFUL DAYS 
BY 

GERTRUDE SANBORN 




Boston 

The Four Seas Company 

1920 



I 

Copyright, ip20, by 
The Four Seas Company 



The Four Seas Press 
Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 



Su,- ^' '^^^ 



©Cl.Ae04563 



TO 

MARY MacLANE 

A psychic woman creature. 
Triumphantly hopeful 
In a common place niche, 
Over a dusty typewriter. 
Not in Waco, Tex, 
Nor Red Wing, Minn, 
But in Milwaukee, Wis, 
Greets you and regrets 
Your melancholy view 
Of life, and presents 
Another and more 
Hopeful outlook. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Aqua Marine Day ii 

A Place in the Moonlight 15 

Aspiration 20 

Manifest Mysteries 23 

Merely a Carton 29 

My Public Library 34 

I Smile at a Hanging 37 

Wraiths 39 

Profitable Idling 43 

A Hut 45 

A Golden Shower 48 

A Scholarly Workman 50 

A Curtain Call 55 

Equipment 57 

Ribbon Dreams 60 

Poor Old Devil 63 

Emigrants 66 

Found 69 

Love 71 

Breakfast 74 



CONTENTS 

Old People 79 

A Crowd of Moods 83 

KissLESS 86 

A Gift to Him From Me 94 

Twilight 96 

To My Dead Lover — A Soldier .... 98 

Cables 100 

A Thank Offering 102 

Interiors 106 

Umbrellaless in the Cosmic Weather . . 11 1 

God's Song 122 



I J Citizen of Eternity 



I. CITIZEN OF ETERNITY 

AQUA MARINE DAY 

TT is a flaming blue and gold day; patches of 
■*■ golden rod here; curves and dashes of blue 
water there; Lombardy poplars surdily erect; red 
berries; caroling birds; voices calling; bells; and 
the tea kettle singing. 

Air, delicately perfumed, ruffles my muslin cur- 
tains. I raise my head from an embroidered pil- 
low case, the gift of a friend. 

My foot touches the floor. It is freshly swept, 
cool and strewn with blue and white rugs; there 
is a dash of black woven in at the corners. It 
furnishes a contrast: contrast is one of life's bil- 
lion joys. A bit of black at the waist line of a 
sea-green gown ; cherry blossoms scattered over a 
squat vase with bent, black twigs peeping 
through; a snowy, spongy steamed pudding with 
black raspberries caught in the hollows. 

My bath water is cool. I splash and sing. With 
cries of exultant joy I wake the septic, cold walls ; 
the dog; the startled neighbors. I determine to 
probe afresh my unexplored regions of conscious- 

11 



12 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

ness: to search the coming day for all it has to 
offer of happiness and worth. 

My friend Winifred says, "plague take the per- 
son who is always looking on the bright side of 
things" and demands to be told which is the bright 
side of a toothache. From which I take it she 
has never had a toothache; never seen the bright 
gleam of the rescuing forceps ; never admired pats 
of cement; nor cleverly molded gold inlays; nor 
bits of porcelain; never felt the joy of being sur- 
rounded by keen instruments of relief; never, in 
fact, experienced an overwhelming sense of 
thankfulness at being other than an impoverished 
American Indian in the year 1490. 

A good dentist invariably awakes my interest 
in things scientific ; he rams them down my throat 
with his forefinger. That I may chew, swallow 
and live the dentist plods through a lifetime of 
dentistry. I leave my pain in his office and go out 
cramful of joy; I remember his lair as a delight- 
fully modern place full of curious thought awak- 
ening apparatus; mentally I sniff the pungent 
aroma of his colored dentifrice for days. There 
is nothing about a dentist to make me shudder; 
there is nothing about anything to make me 
shudder, because I am not obliged to contemplate 
one thing eternally. I am not obliged to sit in the 
dentist's chair and think of decayed teeth, my 
debts, or Dante's Inferno. I can think of an 



AQUA MARINE DAY 13 

opera, peach jam on Parker house rolls, and my 
new silk dress. I can dream of fair cities; ban- 
quets; waves rolling on a long, clean shore; blue 
mountain snows ; green, smiling valleys. 

Shining from my dip in the blue-green water I 
jBurvey myself in a long glass. I determine to 
cover my back, my limbs and my head with rai- 
ment that is trim, clean and delicately pleasing. 

I am of vast importance in the world. 

I am one of the cogs. 

If I slip out of place some alchemy of fate turns 
me from a cog to a clog. 

If I slip I become a detriment to the great wheel 
of humanity, driven by patient sweating arms and 
legs and backs eloquently bent for usefulness. 

There is a road called *'nerves." I determine 
to keep off that; it is thickly cluttered with vast 
buildings of stone; there are barred windows; 
sanitarium cots; emergency wards; divorce 
courts; lost friendships; doctors' bills; ruined 
hopes; undigested dinners, and shotguns. 

There is a corner called "greed." I drop my 
appetite for pie on it; I lay down a scheme to de- 
fraud an orphan ; I let my neighbor pass me on the 
way to the vegetable bargain counter. She has 
six children. I have none. 

I am common place. I am in no way extra- 
ordinary. 

I am modern from beaten egg shampoo to 



14 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

kaleidoscope hose. I neither sraoke, chew, nor 
drink. I am not in love with some other girl's 
man. 

I am like a dog that loves petting; like a cook; 
like a woodland sprite; like a detective. I have 
the humor of a street car conductor: I laugh when 
a fat woman is caught in the rain; a fat woman 
with yellow clad legs and a short ratine skirt. 

My body obeys instantly when my mind yells 
step lively please. 

I am young as long as my soul keeps ahead of 
my legs and urges me on. 

I am forceful. I have heaven, the ancients, and 
aqua marine tinted lake Michigan behind me. 

If my great great great grandfather was a 
burglar, a liar, a wheat king, a pawn broker, a 
gunman, I fear not. 

I am I. 

No fellow creature can possibly defile me. I 
have built myself. A few crumbling stones, un- 
wisely laid in youth, I am replacing. 

I care for myself studiously that I may love 
others helpfully. I am proud of the breath in my 
body. I cannot keep myself for myself aione. 
Some day I must return whence I came — wise, un- 
wilted, all wool and a yard wide. 



A PLACE IN THE MOONLIGHT 

'T* 0-DAY I played bezique; rode in the street 
-■- cars; made money; bought clothes; argued 
with a friend; sat in a close room reading the 
newspapers ; trudged through a department store ; 
poured over columns of figures ; sold shoes to the 
ragman; repaired an automobile cover; sang in a 
choir; and wrote a poem. 

I was part of the hurly-burly of the vast onward 
sweep of things. 

Now it is the hour just at the edge of day when 
the full page turns over exhaling the mystic scent 
of fading but cherished roses, and offers for my 
inscription the cool, blank page of night. 

I unlace my shoes and slip my toes from my 
stockings. I unlace my mind and slip it past its 
conventions. All day my toes were hermetically 
sealed in neat modish shoes and my mind was 
occupied by the blustering custom^ jf the daily 
struggle. But this is my hour. The long busy 
day belonged to the world and its people; my mind 
forged ahead and grappled with problems. 

In my barefooted abandon I go right out in the 
yard under the elm tree. I cfjre not a whit what 
Mrs. Whittlesful next door may think. They are 
my feet; this is my tree; it is my hour. 

15 



16 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

As the cool grass brushes my toes there is an 
inner stirring. I Hft my head and peer into the 
sky. I am unaccustomed to its magnificence; to 
the brilliance of stars; but soon these things in- 
terest me tremendously; my glance becomes bold. 

The other night when I came home from the 
theatre I looked at the sky for a moment, but I 
felt no thrill. Ah, that was because I had my 
shoes on. The current of freedom was grounded ; 
it was unable to sweep through and through. My 
free mind slipping away to the skies, and my free 
toes on the cool earth make a powerful circuit. 

I move from under the tree. Now in the moon- 
light I am in line with the ancients. Every tick- 
ling blade of grass is a ticket in the box office of 
life; they let me in to a front seat on the crust 
of this sphere where I gaze at the comedies and 
tragedies of centuries. I perceive the upbuilding 
and the shattering of the ages ; I behold the glories 
of dynasties; I am awed and amused by kings; I 
criticize with thought and I write the deductions 
of my mind in my heart's blood on my quivering 
soul. Yesterday I criticized a play at the David- 
son Theatre ; I gave ten lines to gowns ; five para- 
graphs to the leading man; I closed with some 
persiflage that strung the thing out to a three 
quarter column. 

A place was cleared for me in a newspaper of- 
fice; it was dusty with street sweepings that blew 



A PLACE IN THE MOONLIGHT 17 

in through the screen; an editor paid me in bills; 
I bought cheese, ripe olives and a small rhinestone 
buckle: but for my criticism of the centuries I 
received more, much more. I received open se- 
same to the worlds upon worlds upon worlds out 
beyond. A place was cleared for me in the Milky 
Way; it was dusky with star mist; I surveyed 
long dark strips lying dimly across; we call them 
coal sacks; a scientist says perhaps these mys- 
terious strips are really heaven. You are scorn- 
ful; I am pleased. There are many statements in 
science and astronomy that bring infinite peace 
and harmony. 

I think of God when I look at the workings of 
a clock; at the building of a bridge; at a train 
climbing a mountain. 

I cannot pray to God to give me this, give me 
that, as He has already provided all. If I do not 
find things it is because I do not care enough; 
work enough; hope enough. 

Here in the moonlight I, and my life, assume 
gigantic proportions. All that has gone before is 
mine; all that has been said, done, thought, is 
mine to sift, keep, discard. I and millions of 
other I's are representatives now of the great firm 
of humanity with a home office in the sky. I am 
carrying on what the centuries have wrought; and 
in spite of this smashing fact I sometimes concern 
myself with arguing over the price of cheap, scent- 



18 I, CITIZEN OF ETERNITY 

ed soap ; or bawling out bridge scores ; or dancing 
in foul smelling rooms. 

To-day I felt small wlien a door was slammed 
in my face ; when someone intimated I didn't know 
much anyhow; but to-night I feel colossal; gigan- 
tic as the stretch of ages. Thousands of hearts, 
souls, desires, achievements have gone to make 
me. Storms have wrecked; suns have warmed; 
frosts have chilled; glaciers have slipped; seas 
have dried; wars have devastated; peace has 
built; tongues have mingled to produce me and 
my place. Me, and my untrammeled joy! I am 
no accident. I am no mistake in a cycle of blun- 
ders. I am a key in its lock. I am the glorious 
residue of striving peoples. It is my turn here. I 
carry on my shoulders, for a short journey of 
years, skies, stars, moonlight, planets and the 
world's wonderful burden. 

Always there have been rules, and rites, and 
ceremonies. A priest offers a creed. I accept it, 
but turn it upside down; inside out. For in spite 
of palliating doctrines, hungry clergy, sanctimon- 
ious uncles I am still I. I melt, mingle and shape 
a thousand creeds to form one. It is then truly 
my creed; that by which I rise and retire; and it 
is full of joyousness. Because of it I love flowers ; 
babies ; strong men ; women with unsmirched wit ; 
the remarkable figures of Stanislaw Szukalski, 



A PLACE IN THE MOONLIGHT 19 

and the smile of the policeman on our beat over 
a hot pot of coffee on a cold winter night. 

Joy accumulates joy. For the bedridden man 
there is the joy of books, friends, jaunts in the 
realms of the wise ones; for the toiler there is 
the joy of his home, the laughter of children, 
baked potatoes and gravy; for the girl the joy of 
her lover; for the poet the joy of virginal sheets of 
paper. Life is full from the beginning to the end, 
and the whole of life is pure joy. Sorrows are 
only the husks of joy. One by one, with secret 
fingers, I must turn them back alone. It is a 
whole life's work; it is adventure; romance. 



ASPIRATION 

T AM not afraid of life, nor of death, nor of 
something just in between. 

My days are too full of this and that to hold 
fear. There is always someone to help; someone 
to love; something to conquer. When the stock- 
ings are darned I boil vegetables. When my 
family goes on a picnic with a basketful of fried 
chicken, and leaves me behind, I go next door 
and cuddle a strange baby; or invite the old 
clothes woman in ; or go to a socialistic meeting. 

When I feel reasonably certain that there is a 
hunk of dust under the refrigerator I attack it. 
As it sails away through the open door I feel re- 
born. Dust is the thing I work hardest to get that 
I may get rid of it. 

Very often when I am cleaning, or cooking, or 
listening to music, or walking on the hills at sun- 
set, a stinging bitter-sweet feeling grips some sen- 
sitive inner part of me. The outer petals of my 
soul droop suddenly as though touched with clear 
biting cold. The mysterious warm core of my 
soul ceases to pulsate and hangs in my body like 
a small crystal ball in the path of a nor'easter. 
When I was younger I took these symptoms to 

20 



ASPIRATION 21 

presage an attack of biliousness. Now I know it is 
simply the essence of me pining for God. My 
soul, which is ordinarily very patient under com- 
mon place tasks, now and then takes a day off. 
My soul is big. Big as the sky and my body 
groans and creaks as it bursts through. My soul 
and my body can never be one, any more than a 
man and his wife can be one. They exist side by 
side, but when all is said and done, they are two 
and not one. My body enjoys coarse comforts — 
warm stockings, knitted mufflers, peppermint 
candy, taxis, lands, and gold. My soul does not 
care for these things, but contemplates them pa- 
tiently as a passenger with folded hands sits on 
the deck of a boat sailing on to a distant shore 
contemplates the scenes along the way. These 
stirrings of my soul about the deck of my body 
send the uncertain craft lurching and pitching 
with fright, till I remember my passenger has 
every right to look over the side — is privileged to 
scan the horizon for a glimpse of the loved shore 
ahead and that in order to bring peace to my in- 
ternal economy again I need not have recourse to 
the calomel bottle, but just grant my soul a little 
time off and all will be well. 

In the breasts of millions of people — black, 
white and yellow — a desire for the something be- 
yond death has been planted; planted firm; plant- 



22 I, CITIZEN OF ETERNITY 

ed deep. We have been boiled in oil for express- 
ing it ; racked and tortured ; scourged and blinded ; 
but through the bounding centuries we cherish 
our hope. 

God would not bestow this overwhelming aspi- 
ration simply to mock us with it. 



MANIFEST MYSTERIES 

JAM a soft, clinging, palpitant mystery swing- 
-*• ing for and wide in a dim, mysterious sky, on a 
wholly mysterious ball. 

Everything around me is a mystery; the fly in 
the cream pitcher; the full petaled flower; the sun- 
rise ; warm spattering drops of rain. I can't make 
any of these things. I can merely fashion replicas 
in clay ; or paint on canvas ; or draw word pictures 
with my pencil. I cannot pentrate mysteries. If 
I could but know electricity . . . 

Often at night I go down to the river; a river 
thick with flat, dirty coal boats, and weather 
beaten tugs, and insignificant craft of every des- 
cription. I hunch down into my coat collar with 
my back against the grimy windows of an un- 
speakable hash house, and I look into the sky; 
for, from this particular spot, I obtain a magnifi- 
cent view of an electric sign — a great gorgeous 
burst of splendor that trails commonplace words 
about housework, cooking, and saving on bills at 
right angles across God's heaven. It spurts and 
splashes against the dark curtain of space and it 
means infinitely more than it says. It is a miracle; 
a message; a marvel surpassing words, and man 

23 



24 I, CITIZEN OF ETERNITY 

puts it to work to deal in matters of saving on 
bills! 

People, in that part of town, imagine I am wait- 
ing for a friend who will presently come along 
with the price of a sandwich. They haven't the 
slightest idea that I am bent on the adoration of 
a sign. If I were to say, **Yes, I know this is a 
cold, windy spot, but I'm going to stand here and 
do nothing for a whole hour but look up at that 
sign on the top of that tall building across the 
w^ay — just watch the golden liquid letters trail 
across and across, and with each one as it trails 
off into blackness I am going to experience a 
thrilling sensation ; a feeling of fire and ice ; of joy 
and elation; a feeling far bigger than any you'll 
get in there over a pot of coffee, or in some other 
place over ham and eggs and a noisy jazz band — 
and here — just a moment before you go — when I 
die I'll chuck the harp and the streets of gold and 
all the affluence in heaven if someone will just 
explain electricity, or give me some hope that in 
the sphere after the sphere after the next I may 
begin to comprehend some of its wonders" — if I 
said all this they would begin looking around for 
the police. So I keep still. I find pedestrians 
and police misunderstand very often. There is a 
vast amount of misunderstanding everywhere 
about everything. 

A while ago I had my house wired. A ten-dol- 



MANIFEST MYSTERIES 25 

lar-a-week person, whose dingy apparel bagged at 
the knees, took possession of the premises. He 
talked a great deal about "them wires and bulbs 
— these here fixtures — some boobs at the office." 
Despite his grammatical errors I looked on him 
with awe. He was the link between darkness and 
light. He hitched me up to the greatest power in 
the universe. He induced the living flame of elec- 
tricity to bear me company through long winter 
evenings. With worn, clumsy tools he nailed, 
screwed, and bolted the most stupendous marvel 
in the world into my modest two by four dwelling. 
Delving into the basement, climbing within reach 
of the ceiling, sprawling all over the floor on his 
stomach he evolved this miracle. Ignorant; 
grimy; clumsy; a forty dollar a week nobody; still 
he linked me to the great unkown from out of 
which comes this glowing, crackling power. He 
handled this vast gift from God with insolent 
stupidity. It was no glorified wonder to him; it 
was no boon; no paralyzing pleasure; no guide 
post to eternity. It was a job. A tiresome, put- 
tering ten dollar a week job, and darn it, he 
wished, for heaven's sake, he had took up that 
offer to skin out to Montana. I told him for 
earth's sake I'd trade with him. I'd take his coils 
of wire and his tools, and spend the rest of my 
days wiring houses for electricity and think life 
had treated me pretty well. He grinned, asked 



26 I, CITIZEN OF ETERNITY 

for a cold drink from the kitchen faucet, and told 
the cook I was a queer dame with some punk idees 
in my belfry. 

After he had gone I snapped a switch, and sit- 
ting down under an inverted daffodil tinted bowl 
tried to read, but I could only think of me in this 
20th century. Me, living surrounded by magic; 
me, looked at by billions and billions of eyes that 
smile from the skies; eyes that once knew none 
of these wonders, but now know all. They stare 
amazed at me and my 20th century equanimity. 
They marvel that I am so cold, so unfeeling, so 
prosaic. I fly in the air; I delve in the earth; I 
pluck plums from the tree of science ; I grow rare, 
wonderful fruits, I walk in vast handsome cities; 
I float on the water in palaces; I talk to my 
friends who are hundreds of miles away; the earth 
is yielding to me every one of her wonders. With 
my own hands I fashion marvels. And through 
it all I am dully complacent. I do not catch the 
gleam from the eyes above for I cry at an open 
grave. Because my friend lays down his book 
and his half solved puzzles, quits his room which 
is lighted by the glory of heaven run in on a few 
tiny wires, and progresses a little farther into the 
rich country of Eternity, I mourn. If I were big- 
ger, broader, less stupid, if I could read the mes- 
sage of spring alone, I would smile. When my 
friend went to Switzerland to contemplate beauty 



MANIFEST MYSTERIES 27 

and marvels of scenery, I smiled. I knew Switzer- 
land existed, because I had a miniature chalet 
from there carved out of wood ; and a wee, dainty 
watch; and picture postals. In somewhat the 
same fashion I should know that heaven is there. 
I have had a wee, dainty friend from heaven, 
fashioned of spirit and flesh; I have had world 
enveloping warmth from the sun, lacking which 
I had not existed. 

Every morning as regularly as the postman 
comes around I receive written word from heaven ; 
v/ritten in rock; in field; in bubbling spring; 
dropped from the wing of a bird; blazoned from 
shooting twig and opening bud. I could not carve 
an intricate ST\dss chalet; someone in Switzerland 
did it. I cannot make trees, nor coal, nor dogs, 
nor stars. Someone in heaven does it. If I work 
hard, treat my employer with respect, save my 
money and go on hoping I shall some day see 
Switzerland. If I regard wonders understanding- 
ly, treat God with respect and go on hoping, I 
shall some day see heaven. 

I have gotten so that I cannot lie, quarrel nor 
cheat under my electric light bulbs ; I feel as if an 
eternal eye were upon me ; that dingy forty-dollar- 
a-week person has revolutionized my existence; 
he has opened my eyes; he has preached a deli- 
cate but powerful sermon; he has put hundreds 
of new ideas into my head. I reverence working 



28 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

men. I have respect for the man who digs in a 
sewer; there is something in the management of 
the sewer that he knows a great deal more about 
than I do; something of infinite value to me; to 
the house I live in; to the street I live on; to the 
neighbors; to the city; I do not feel that my maid, 
my laundress, or the ashman are beneath me. 
They all know things I wot not of; they link me 
to the universe; they hold me to my pa-th. Lan- 
guage, birth, education, are strung about us like 
beads around a savage. Just because the ash- 
man has fewer beads than I have does not mean 
that he is less kind, less good, less a candidate for 
immortality than I. After all, beads are mere pif- 
fle when held against eternal fires. 



MERELY A CARTON 

T117HEN I enter a theatre I look happily around 
^ ^ the brilliant foyer. I stand silent a moment 
or two to breath in the sweet scent of flowers. 
Then I check my wraps and trail on into the glit- 
tering, throbbing music-touched spaciousness. In 
sheer silken garments I sit perfectly still while my 
mind, an agile many legged spider, skims all 
about picking up delicate treasures of brain pabu- 
lum. 

I prefer to go to the theatre alone. I prefer to 
meet a massy thought in a quiescent, reasonable 
spirit. I do not want to chew sticky caramels; 
listen to the last escapade of somebody's cook; 
discuss gowns; bean loaf; bull dogs; nor divorces. 
The playwright has said something to me, and I 
must hear it. I came into this world alone. I 
shall go out of it alone, so why shouldn't I go to 
the theatre alone? But people think it strange. 
You know they do. 

I have schooled myself out of loneliness. Even 
when I sit on a chill November Sunday morning 
chewing the crackling w^affles of an eggless age — 
bereft by a howling wind of the morning paper — 
bereft by fate of those I love — bereft by the dog, 
who has gone out to hunt dried bones — bereft of 

29 



30 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

a good digestion — I am not lonely. I am com- 
panioned by a tranquil, sympathetic, deep, color- 
ful, joyous, sparkling, age-old essence. The atmos- 
phere is quickened ; the sunlight falling aslant my 
morsel of waffle becomes more effulgent. I tingle 
with anticipation; I am breathless with ecstasy; 
alone in my breakfast room I am entertaining a 
celestial presence. Years ago I entertained it 
when I wore swaddling clothes ; I bumped it about 
upon the floor; then I dragged it through inter- 
minable drab school days. Later, as I grew older, 
I found this presence perpetually unassuming and 
courteous, unless I took it to functions, soirees, 
the dansants, or glutted it with receptions. Then 
it got to pounding about in my cranium. It acted 
like the very old deuce. My head ached with the 
turmoil. Because I flounced from society's skinny 
arm and flew home in a transport of bewilderment 
I was severely punished and sent to bed supper- 
less. I was considered stubborn, backward, lack- 
ing in good taste, and an all around fool. Over- 
weighted by this celestial presence my anaemic 
body writhed in agonized contortions. Every time 
I went to a frivolous function the presence in me 
was thrown off the main track, and the bumping 
about advised me something was wrong. Sud- 
denly I realized that my real business in life was 
the safe conduct of my celestial visitor. I dis- 
covered that my body, and the pleasures derived 



MERELY A CARTON 31 

from gratifying it were as brass compared to the 
fine gold sifting, sifting through my soul. 

My small, rather well formed body is, after all, 
merely a carton. The particular bit of everlast- 
ing soul, intensely luminous as radium, with which 
I am intrusted, has stopped here on an eternal 
pilgrimage of the universe to be shown around by 
me. Now if a visitor comes down to Milwaukee 
from Madison to see me I show her about. I take 
her to the stores; the parks; the brick yards. I 
point out the beds of cannas-and try to tell her 
how bricks are made. I coax her to the lake front 
and descant upon the similarity between our bay 
and the Bay of Naples. I try to please her. Never 
once in her presence does it enter my mind to say 
I am lonely. Yet she is merely from Madison. 
When she goes away I know she will come back 
again. If I have something further to say to her 
there is telephone connection. 

But to my visitor from infinity how rude I have 
been ! There was a time when I actually sat down 
and moped because another human carton, of 
whom I was fond, went to the circus, surrepti- 
tiously, leaving me behind. What must my celes- 
tial visitor have thought! What obloquy to con- 
vert myself into a sullen lump of moodiness when 
this fair, sweet- willed, patient stranger was about. 

My body, with its two stout legs, is to show my 
soul over the earth, and my soul is not interested 



32 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

in frivolities. It is interested only in progress. It 
has not always been here. It is not here to stay. 
It is passing through. I am its cicerone. May I 
be an intelligent one! I must acquaint it with 
socialism; with great industries; with vast fac- 
tories and their methods; with the constructive 
ideas of big men; with art; with science; with the 
world's best labors. I must not acquaint it with 
unworthy things, for when it is gone — it is gone. 
There is no telephone connection. When my celes- 
tial visitor passes on to the next sphere I want to 
be remembered as an adequate carton. I do not 
wish to be spoken of as **That G. San- 
born, back there on earth, who pinched me 
and chilled me. I gained nothing. I came 
away empty. Mercy! I believe she went 
through me and acutually took away some of my 
lustre. Why is it that those cartons are so in- 
sensible of us? They are so afraid of something 
they call *death.' If they carried us with vision 
the journey would be more comfortable for us all. 
The vital truths their minds uncover are assimi- 
lated by us and go on forever, yet many of them 
do not pick and choose carefully." 

Rather would I hear the echo of my soul's voice 
saying, "My little carton was imbued with the 
glory of democracy, and she loved the open mea- 
dows. These two things were paramount in her 
mind. In our journey together she impressed 



MERELY A CARTON 33 

them thoroughly upon me. She showed me the 
beauties in each. She urged them upon me. We 
were so busy studying, seeing, ravehng, that not 
once on the way did either of us feel lonely. I 
gained some really helpful knowledge down there 
on the earth, and with pride and pleasure I recom- 
mend the ideas of my little carton, G. Sanborn, to 
citizenship in Eternity." 



MY PUBLIC LIBRARY 

IV/flNE the steps; mine the nobly proportioned 
foyer; mine the intricate mosiac of floor and 
wall; mine the naked, glistening statues of In- 
dians ; the glowing low-hung lights ; fresh washed 
corridors and columns. Mine the tales, the wis- 
dom, the pronouncements, of a world of learned 
men — all mine ! Piled tier on tier ; dusted, ticket- 
ed in white bordered with a tiny red line vivid as 
life blood — they wait ready to my hand. 

That great author I met on the street yester- 
day — heavens! — he wore sable; he was attended 
by pompous friends; he was haughty; hurried; his 
opulent manner frightened me into a fruiterer's 
shop where I bought two sour and dried up 
oranges and fumbled with the change, the buttons 
on my coat, and what not, until I was sure the 
opulent one was safely over the street. No doubt 
his thoughts and mine might clasp hands gra- 
ciously, but his smooth glove emerging from his 
bristling fur sleeve and my shabby one, bounded 
by faded broadcloth, can never meet. 

But in my public library! Ah, that is another 
tale. There, half an hour later, clothes outside 
the question, I met the opulent one, in unassum- 
ing print. Shorn of his strutting friends, ticketed, 

34 



MY PUBLIC GARDEN 35 

indexed, classified between the little red lines. I 
rushed down the quivering, glittering recesses of 
his mind, and sat unashamed in my faded broad- 
cloth, my frayed gloves turning the wondrous 
pages. 

Sometimes I regret my stunted education. A 
weak stomach was my educational Bluebeard. I 
stand aghast before engaging forms of rhetoric 
and mourn. At times I comfort myself by think- 
ing that great halls of learning have a crippling 
effect on the embryonic poet. Imagination is 
shoved like a naughty child into a dark closet 
while Form is invited into the light and made 
much of. Little brother Rhetoric spurns sister 
Rhapsody. In this mood I look askance at col- 
lege walls and going my untutored way make 
haphazard records of varied days, adventures, and 
meditations. I am at a loss when it comes to ar- 
ranging typographical decorations, but if my 
punctuation is poor my heart is warm. I cannot 
produce a codified treatise, but I can dream. In 
my public library I meet all men unafraid. So, life 
assumes vahdity and charm. While I have car- 
fare and can get to its doors my public library will 
continue to educate me. 

I dream, and read, and turn pages with a clergy- 
man on one side of me and an Italian laborer on 
the other. The Italian has wandered into the 
wrong room. He was in search of the magazine 



36 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

section, but coming in from the bleak, snow blown 
street he became confused. He has settled down 
in a ponderous chair. The warmth and silence 
entice all thought of reading from his mind, and 
presently he falls asleep. A dapper, brisk attend- 
ant pussy-foots down the aisle. I slide a copy of 
Emerson under the Italian's hand as it lies on the 
polished table. The Italian preserves his attitude 
of deep cogitation. The clergyman looks up, and 
smiles, and nods. He and I continue to cram our 
heads with various aphorisms. 

Having the slumbering Italian so close arouses 
a pleasant feeling of democracy. He symbolizes 
that vast, patient class which we must help along 
the way. Shut up in college walls these illumin- 
ating bits of life would not be mine. I look about 
the walls of my public library and smile content- 
edly. I prefer to learn in public with the larger 
portion of mankind. True I shall only brush 
lightly on isms and ologies, but I shall be polished, 
and tutored, and squared by dear, sweating 
peoples. 



I SMILE AT A HANGING 

nPHERE is always a lot of talk about lost per- 
sons. It is rot. No one is ever lost. Did a tree, 
or a bird, or a leaf on the river ever get lost? They 
merely progress in a great disordered order. The 
man who was hung yesterday? No, of course, 
he's not lost. He made a mistake. If I make a 
mistake and put too much milk in a cake, do I 
consider myself lost? Not at all. If I had the 
low order of intelligence possessed by the man 
who was hung perhaps I might have spoiled a life 
instead of a cake. You don't suppose the judge 
had that man hanged because he wanted him lost 
or damned or thought he would be put irrevocably 
outside the scheme of things. He had him hanged 
because, to his notion, there was nobody here 
quite capable of giving him knowledge. He was 
too unutterably dense to receive instruction. 
Therefore the judge passed him on to the next 
sphere. The judge was sure there was someone 
in the next terraqueous globe who could handle 
the case more advantageously. 

A hanging admits two things beyond a doubt. 
It admits human inefficiency and it admits eter- 
nity. Therefore at a hanging it is not out of 
place to wear a slightly pleasant expression. 

37 



38 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

Here, in Wisconsin, we do not hang. I am 
neither for nor against it. I lie back on the im- 
mutable law that nothing is ever lost. Why argue 
behind it? A few years, more or less, cannot add 
nor take away from it. 

Whenever my religious convictions get below 
par, and some event has landed a solar plexus 
on my sense of security in the next life, I hunt up 
a hanging. I have never been intimately ac- 
quainted with a judge. At the time my grand- 
father sat on the supreme bench I was more in- 
terested in nursing bottles than in judges. But 
I have grown to regard their decisions, and an- 
swers, and pronouncements with awe. When- 
ever I see a man that is to be hanged, and know 
that a judge has sentenced him, it is almost like 
a certificate on the hereafter. The judge, a strong, 
brilliant personage, strikes out into the beyond 
and I cling to his coat tails feeling wonderfully 
reassured as I smile. 



WRAITHS 

COMETIMES I push the curtains apart and sit 
^ in the window at twilight. 

There is an eerie blue-mistiness about the twi- 
light that wreaths enchantment about me. 

I see points of light, here and there, as they 
bravely pierce the wavering dimness. 

I see leaves scurrying up and across the road- 
way. But the objects I meditate on are the 
vague, silent figures of men slanting homeward. 
Some are eager; some stooped and slow; some 
carry bundles ; some drive majestically free-hand- 
ed, and alighting at the curb, dash with prosper- 
ous, swinging motion into tiled vestibules. 

To me, in my silent room behind my pane of 
glass, these voiceless, dust touched figures are 
like little tumbling pieces in a sombre-colored 
kaleidoscope. 

These men figures have returned from the tur- 
bulent hard beating heart of the city to all manner 
of wives. They come with the weariness of 
struggle puckering their kind eyes. Their willing 
arms are cramped and tired. They have bought, 
sold, wrecked and constructed through a long 
day. 

My heart goes out to these silent, slanting men 

39 



40 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

ligures. Some of them have lost sons in the war; 
some of them have been mif ortunate in business ; 
some have not kept faith; but at the day's end, in 
the blue-mistiness, they slant, unerringly nest- 
ward. 

Their wives do not see them coming. They are 
busy steaming puddings; directing servants; 
rouging their faces; scolding the children; tele- 
phoning the neighbors ; knitting for the needy, and 
dozens of other things. 

All up and down the street there is not a wife in 
a window. Not one pair of eyes beside mine to 
see these dear, pale wraiths slanting homeward. 

I pick out figures I know. There is the tenor 
across the avenue. A big, jovial fellow. He 
lunges around the comer with a bag of coffee un- 
der his arm. His head bobs up and down as he 
picks his way over the stones and casts hurried, 
eager glances at the windows ahead. No one 
greets him. I happen to know his wife, too. I 
know she is sitting at her typewriter building an 
inky monocracy of recondite sentences, in con- 
nection with women's rights. An acrid, search- 
ing aroma steals unheeded round her head. It is 
the stew burning in the kitchen. 

The days of woman's amenable softness are 
gone. In the cauldron of centuries is being 
cooked a new state. The brain of woman, long 
pushed under the boiling broth with the huge tines 



WRAITHS 41 

of tradition and custom, is mounting steadily to 
the rim. 

Poor, pitiful old Eve — thoughtless, voteless, 
friendless — with no job but the ephemeral one of 
making herself beautiful from an extremely low 
stock. There was one big day in her life and that 
was the day /she was introduced to Adam, closely 
followed by their courtship and marriage. The 
last episode, and rightly, suggested to Milton the 
''Paradise Lost.'* 

It is a far cry from Eve to me. But at last there 
is a vast world wide upheaval going on in the twi- 
light. 

Gone is the halycon twilight of other centuries. 

My twilight is no longer quiescent. It is vigi- 
lant, sentient, its tearing asunder reverberates 
over the earth. 

Through long yesterdays woman waited on and 
for man. To-day she waits for nothing. She is no 
more the pusilanimous half of a perpetual dyad. 
She is a free agent in the throes of a gigantic 
redintegrating movement. She has invaded in- 
dustry by the million. 

Eve is busy getting her rights in the world. 

When Eve emerges from her transition period 
she will again extend her hand to Adam, but this 
time with free comradeship, not with mere sex 
tremblings. 



42 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

So I see the pale, dismayed wraiths of men 
slanting homeward through the cool violet twi- 
light. And I grieve for them a wee bit. But I 
am proud of women. I would not have them turn 
back, pliable servitors, with faces against win- 
dows, imbued only with the desire to cajole and 
please. 



PROFITABLE IDLING 

TT seems an idle, superficial thing to select a 

sheltered nook in an old rock, and to sit swing- 
ing one foot in the sun. I am, however, deeply oc- 
cupied. It is an accomplishment to sit quietly 
imbibing the tonic air. I view the beauties and 
mysteries of bent grass blades and moist flower 
petals. When I run, talk, walk or play I lose the 
deep, limpid quiet of the shadowed pool beyond. 
When I sit dumbly still I hear witching voices of 
birds. 

Presently I stop swinging my foot. 

My eyelashes cease their quivering, and from 
round, set eyes I stare upward ecstatic. I am a 
living thing over milHons of dead. Could I ask 
more? 

It is no longer in my heart to fuss at the tart- 
ness of gooseberry pie; to scold the waitress be- 
cause my coffee is cold; to write a contemptuous 
letter to an acquaintance. 

This is what the idle moment in the gray-green 
nook of the old wall has done for me. 

A female person, looking from a window close 
by, ascribes all laziness, indolence, do-nothingness 
to me. She thinks I am vacant minded ; that after 
eating muffins and curling my hair I am too su- 

43 



44 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

pine to do some useful thing such as embroider- 
ing interminable guest towels. She does not 
know that I am embroidering my soul. If I told 
her she would say, "Shucks, why can't you do 
something that is something?" 

I conclude it is not necessary to run frantically 
and grab at life. Sitting in a deep mood brings 
many colored thought fish. Of course if I am 
being paid to whack out a story on my typewriter 
it is not just that I poke off somewhere to cogi- 
tate. I idle on my own time and money. And it 
repays me. 

I sit in a mossy nook and stop, look and listen, 
and come away proof, for one day, against a list 
of pitfalls. 



A HUT 

"T^AY in; day out; year in; year out; I live here in 
Milwaukee. I write articles on fish, mosqui- 
toes, babies, the superiority of the male brain to 
the female — in which I do not believe — there is no 
female brain — as well speak of a female liver. 
All the morning I sit at my dusty typewriter and 
write, WTite, wTite for people all over this big 
country who cannot write for themselves. 

In the afternoon the sun comes poking round 
and prods me in the shoulder. 

I get up, close the door on a mess of crumpled 
papers and pencil sharpenings and stroll over to 
Lake Michigan where I think thoughts that belong 
entirely to me and have nothing to do with mos- 
quitoes, or irrigation, or gravel pits. 

I have it in me to live in a hut in a wood with 
only one pair of stockings and a blue gingham 
frock. But having been born in a bustling manu- 
facturing center of highly cultivated parents I 
cannot live in a wood or even in a hut. 

I dwell elegantly in a white enameled apartment 
that has mahogany doors with glass knobs. 

I own embroidered luncheon cloths, silver plat- 
ters, porch swings, and a few good pictures. 

But every morning when I awaken I think of 

45 



46 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

the hut. Living as I do I am obliged to keep pace 
with the seasons. In the spring it devolves upon 
me to change my blue velvet winter hat for one 
bedecked with flowers suited to the tender sea- 
son. 

I must do, have, eat and wear all the things that 
will be pleasing to the taste of the persons in my 
neighborhood. 

This between me and my hut. 

This between civilization and freedom. 

Though I feel odd and apart, I must not be odd 
and apart. I must conform to the prescribed 
rules of conduct. Therefore I must earn money. 
Even though Buddha, Confucius, the Christ, 
turned away from it I must go on earning it to 
enable myself to wear gray spats when gray spats 
are worn. 

But I think very often of the secret joys of a 
hut and the free feel of a blue gingham frock. 

Once I mentioned the frock and the hut to a 
friend of mine, an actress; "Why, what a wonder- 
ful idea!" she warbled, "We'll go Saturday. Fm 
so fearfully tired. You find the hut and I'll bring 
an old frock and an old nightie — nothing more." 

I met her at the station. 

I had a small parcel tucked under my arm, my 
blue gingham frock. She had on a new silk 
gown; a large gray hat with a flaunting feather; 
all her diamonds; a vast bulging suitcase filled 



A HUT 47 

with satin slippers; peignors; yachting costumes; 
golf togs and heaven knows what. 

And behind her came her advertising man. 

I wanted to tear my hair. Instead I had to dis- 
cuss a change of plans with the advertising man. 
He said it would not do for us to go and bury 
ourselves in some outlandish spot. So we had 
to go to a fashionable, crowded, summer hotel. I 
telegraphed for my clothes and sent my neatly 
rolled gingham frock back home by parcel post. 

This is as close as I ever came to the hut. 



A GOLDEN SHOWER 

A LWAYS the sixty golden moments of an hour 
are pelting softly on my head, my face, my 
fingers. They pour, pour, pour, about me and I 
have only to exchange them for life; for joy; for 
the scent of flowers; the clear, high laughter of 
children. 

Friends have failed me; cooks have stolen my 
silk waists and jewelry; the particular morning 
paper I liked best has gone into bankruptcy; I 
have missed soap sales by a day; my shoes have 
burst out before they were paid for; I have gone 
on trips Saturday afternoons, expecting to view 
scenery, and ridden along behind miles of freight 
cars; but to offset all this the cajolerie of future 
promises, in the shower of sixty golden moments, 
beats, beats gently around my head. 

Can I feel disappointment or know despair 
when from cradle to grave this fresh unceasing 
shower laves and soothes; brushes away the old 
and brings the new — brushes away the old and 
brings the new? 

A golden moment — a golden moment — a golden 
moment — so they go. From a storm troubled 
hour I move forever to a fair unchartered hour. 

At nine o'clock certain unpleasant things hap- 

48 



A GOLDEN SHOWER 49 

pen. Swish — swish of the golden showers and at 
ten something dehghtful has taken place; there 
are gay people in the street; a motor at the door; 
a letter in the box; a voice at the telephone. 

When I die I want my bodily carcass resolved 
into gray ash and blown from the top of a cheery, 
smiling hill where the boughs of apple trees wave, 
and there is deep, deep purple clover. There my 
sixty golden moments will catch me up, and I 
will go on with them forever; now here; now 
there ; with the bird ; with the bee ; with the spring 
flower poking through the mold; in every calm, 
fair, sweet activity of the open. 

I will be busy as I am busy in my house to-day. 
I will push sturdily or delicately, as it may be, but 
push forever on with the dripping golden shower. 

In my powdered grayness I will be wafted over 
mountains and seas, over delectable vistas. I will 
stretch and expand and careen on into Eternity 
as happily as I am careening now, for what is this 
ceaseless patter of sixty golden moments in every 
now but Eternity? 



A SCHOLARLY WORKMAN 

XT EAR the house where I live there is a long, 
strong bridge that spans a wide, cedar banked 
river. 

I go there at dusk. 

The flaming sky, the red and black of the slow 
moving water, the thin mists, falling, enchant me. 

A whistle blows. 

A solid stream of dusty, weary workmen push 
past me. 

Outlined against the sky of eternal fires they 
present a spectacle that awes me. 

I knew a young workman once, very intimately. 
As I write he lies wounded in Prance. He was 
one of the atoms in the great unwashed tribe that 
troupe past me on the long bridge at sunset. 

He had little education. Circumstances had 
forced him out, a mere round-eyed babe, to toil 
and sweat for his particular pail and sausage. But 
he had a nimble wit and an expanding mind. He 
never stumbled dully over the bridge mumbling 
about his wrongs. He walked erect vnth his eyes 
on the sunset. 

Night after night he smiled at me. Finally he 
said, *'Hello." Then one night he stopped, and 
nodding his head toward the jostling mob that 

50 



A SCHOLARLY WORKMAN 51 

surged about us he asked, "Well, what do you 
make of us?'* I shrugged my shoulders. "I am 
merely here to see what you make of yourselves," 
I replied. 

"I'll go home and get washed," said the boy, 
"And I'll come back after sunset. The bridge will 
be quiet then, and there'll be 'a yellow moon plow- 
ing through a black sky — there'll be lights bob- 
bing below on the river — what say?" 

"I'll be here at eight?" said I. 

That was the beginning of a strange friend- 
ship. 

I shall have to confess that while I have had 
the pleasure of knowing lawyers, physicians, 
painters, poets, clergymen, actors, manufactur- 
ers and many sorts of men, I have never known 
so sweet, so rare a being as this young workman. 
He was exquisitely fine! He had never seen a 
drawing room, but his soul was distilled gentle- 
ness. He had not read thick books, but he was 
a poet and a philosopher. The only preparation 
he was able to make upon leaving his grimy 
world to enter my more refined realm was the 
slight change made possible by a limited cake of 
soap. 

Our friendship lasted two years and I count it 
as one of the dearest things in life. People smiled 
to see me walking and conversing earnestly with 
a tattered, ill shod, brigandish sort of person. But 



52 I, CITIZEN OF ETERNITY 

my brigand was a finely caparisoned cavalier in 
the realm of thought. His ideas were flaming 
torches. They were odd ; streakedly illuminating ; 
pungently rare like a gombier flambeau. My 
family thought I was tutoring the young work- 
man; that I was instructing him in the simple 
rudiments of speech. My heavens ! It was I who 
was learning. I could flourish a pencil, but mine 
was not the eloquence of this full throated young- 
ster. Whatever it was he did in the great smok- 
ing foundry at the river's edge I do not know. He 
panted, and puffed, and sweated at some gigantic, 
Satanic, sooty task every day in the year. 

In the midst of bellowings and blowings, thun- 
derings and smashings he did his bit in a terrify- 
ing industrial world, and then, at six o'clock he 
was shot forth in a puff of stifling, fetid air. 

After the magic passes with soap and basin I 
have seen him standing with a flower in his hand 
lost in a study of its fragile petals. His whole 
existence was bent on a search for beauty. He 
never saw the ugly, or dull, or mean. Even in 
the molten metal he descried grandeur and 
nobility of foiTQ. 

He taught me that it is the workman who turns 
the world, and it is a world that toils only for to- 
day just as it tugged and hauled and pulled 12,000 
years ago. 

**If," he told me, "I accumulate pennies to-day 



A SCHOLARLY WORIOIAN 53 

for my child of to-morrow so that it may soar on 
the wings of freedom, so ought my generation 
provide by organization, for the exemption of 
future generations from useless labor. If this 
stream of men on the bridge had no need to strug- 
gle for the bare necessities of life they might be at 
leisure part of the time. And if they were at 
leisure they would think, and if they thought they 
would find their souls. Now they must content 
themselves with a few short reaching dollars, a 
pail of coffee and a piece of sausage, small incom- 
modious dwellings where the soot of the factory 
falls like black rain. And this less than existence, 
this life span of theirs, shorn even of the pleasure 
known to a cow rolling in the sweet, cool grass 
has fallen upon them because though humanity 
has organized to destroy herself she has not or- 
ganized to build. Through the slow moving cen- 
turies she has erected no warehouse. Again and 
again humanity has produced an over abundance, 
but there is always a deficit, toll, starvation. 

"Prom a few aspects labor for daily subsistence 
is beautiful and majestic, but from well earned 
leisure is steeped an enriching, ennnobling 
draught. In return for labor I receive my pail, my 
coarse chunk of bread and my square of sausage. 
In return for a few hours' leisure I would receive 
into my being the rare beauties of the world, and 



54 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

my soul would ascend over the sooty roofs to the 
farthest star. 

"These thoughts would be bitter-sweet to you 
if you toiled in a foundry." 

That was it! But I, what could I do? 

I went home, pulled the blankets from my bed ; 
ate a dry crust; forebore my bath; removed the 
screen from my window, and created an atmos- 
phere of stinging desolation. I did not want to 
think down to a condition of wretched discomfort, 
I wanted to experience tweaking dispair and 
evolve a way back to the fair ground of comfort. 
In one night I wanted to lead a whole world full 
of toilers back with me, but after staying awake 
for hours goaded by a chill, miasmic damp, tor- 
tured by mosquitoes, unfamiliarly hungry, I 
evolved no scheme. I merely caught cold and 
called in a physician and he charged me $5.00. 



A CURTAIN CALL 

T WRITE this book now because two months 

from now I may be picking fruit in a foreign 
vineyard; or traveling toward Panama; or I may 
be dead. 

Very often I pay $1.25 for a volume that is ad- 
vertised as a thrilling detective story; I buy a 
front seat at a theatre to view a detective play; I 
listen with bated breath to the tale of a charity 
worker who has unearthed a mysterious house- 
hold in the slums, and all the while my individual 
existence is the most gripping enigma of all. These 
brown lisle thread stockings — will I be alive to put 
them on again next week? 

As I turn this question over and over in my 
mind it resolves into a puissant, recondite thing. 

If I were to know just how many more weeks, 
days, hours, minutes, I have to live, life would be 
fearful or it would be stale and flat. Untroubled 
by the necessity of ringing down the curtain on 
my own drama, I am free of the fear that I might 
drop it too soon and cut off something I was try- 
ing to accomplish, and so spoil the effectiveness of 
my existence; free of the fear that I might drop 
it too late and so expose a scene empty of words 
and works. 

55 



56 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

If this dropping of the curtain were left to me 
it would complicate my life and the lives of my 
friends beyond the limits of endurance. 

My mother said, when I was a child, "Go out 
into the garden and play. I will call you when it 
is time for your music lesson." So I romped and 
played and sang through the golden hours with no 
shadow of worry over a possible tardiness, and no 
dull hanging-about fraught with crushing re- 
sponsibility. 

Mother had arranged it all for me. 

It was sweet, comely and conclusive. 

So God has arranged. 

I am free to stray through the sunlit streets; 
free to love; free to read; to write; to laugh; to 
sing ; to dream ; to toil ; to frolic ; to rest ; free until 
the moment I am called in by Him to ponder on 
immutable precepts. 

It is so extremely beautiful an adjustment that 
I wish never to complain of it. 



EQUIPMENT 

T^OO much indoor life tethers the faculties and 
fatally poisons the mind. 

By rambling I escape back to the sun. 

To-day I strolled out into the country with my 
poor relation, the dog. 

I sat at the edge of a pool, under the shadow 
of a grand-fatherly fruit tree and cast pebbles into 
the water. 

In a peaceful friendly spirit the dog and I had 
wandered abroad together. 

While I ruminated the dog busied himself with 
all those small dog activities that are so astound- 
ingly forceful and so astonishingly futile. 

He hurried to and fro. He fussed and fumed. 
He pursued tiny, scared creatures and insulted 
them with hoarse raucousness. 

Presently he gave up the whole proceeding and 
sank down with his chin on my knee. 

His tongue lolled out over his sharp teeth, and 
in the midst of the delicate, wistful, soul-gripping 
summer beauteousness he slept and dreamed of 
bones. 

Into the brilliant sunlit moments I crowded 
ideas, aspirations, emotions. But the dog slept. 
His physical life was all important. Eating, sleep- 

57 



58 I, CITIZEN OF ETERNITY 

ing, breeding, bind his sleek carcass like gyves to 
the terrene orb. 

The breezes from the far-wide sky sounded 
across my soul as across a quivering lute. 

I had always wondered what happens to dogs 
after death. 

Suddenly an answer came down the breeze. 

Nothing ! 

I had always wondered what would happen to 
me after death. 

Softly, delicately, almost imperceptibly, and yet 
bearing a cool, sharp point that sank, sank into 
my consciousness, came the answer down the 
breeze. 

The mind of man is limitless and eternal. 

Reviewing the days of the dog's life I found him 
equipped merely for this sphere. By contrast I 
am equipped for some other. 

John Haynes Holmes has called my attention 
to the fact that the dog knows nothing of the 
philosophies of all time; he does not spend years 
in metaphysical conjectures ; he is blind to modern 
scientific wonders ; he does not spend hours in re- 
morseful searching of his conscience ; he does not 
make light of his shining body and rend it cruelly 
for the weal of a possible soul. 

Though I have taken the dog's head in my two 
hands and gazed long into his eyes he has never 
put a thought into words; he has not built and 



EQUIPMENT 59 

hoped and loved and died for the good of his kind ; 
he has never chanted a hymn of praise to his 
Master. 

These are but stepping stones for me, but they 
are all things the dog wots not of. 

If death be the finish of me then there has been 
a vast, elaborate over provision in my equipment. 

All provident nature casts the lie into my teeth. 

The equipment with which the dog is endowed 
is ample for his life here, therefore when I gaze 
at the dog I know his finish is soon. But I am 
provisioned for a long, fruitful journey of the soul 
out somewhere beyond. 

If this particular world were all there is for me 
then the fleetness of the greyhound I owned last 
year, and the snarling force of the bull dog sitting 
beside me to-day, are of more use than my philos- 
ophical brain. They are in better keeping with 
the scheme of things than the beneficence eman- 
ating from the heart of my Christian neighbor. 
Fudge ! 

I was not given an expanding mind, a joyous 
heart, a luminous soul, merely that I might barter 
daily for a dollar's worth of food, bustle up one 
road and down the next and then dissolve into 
thin nothingness. 

I go on. 



RIBBON DREAMS 

SOMETIMES there are people about who jar 
^ one. 

People who are stupid and coarse, and who live 
meat and gravy lives with black coffee or heavy 
beer guzzled on top of ea^J> meal to wash it down 
in anticipation of the next; people who lie in soft 
billowy beds protected by silken coverlets and 
who frown and gulp bromo-seltzer; people who 
peck at the small, mean crumbs of life like 
chickens in a coop; people who wrangle about 
drain pipes ; scold their maids ; throw boiling water 
on starving cats, and majign clergymen behind 
their backs; people who fuss and fume and use 
poor French gleaned from novels voraciously 
gobbled; people who criticize and preach and 
snarl in the face of the wonderful sun ; people who 
would crush anemones under their heels. 

These people are blind bats. They are worse. 
They are bad. When I fall in with such people I 
make any plausible excuse and escape. 

I do not want to lose one moment of joy in this 
life. 

I am surrounded by beauty. 

I want to touch it; feel it; breath it; live it; 
every hour. 

60 



RIBBON DREAMS 61 

I want no one to bind my ankles and halt them 
in the dance of joy. 

To-day I spent some moments with an uncharit- 
able soul. I felt poisoned and stifled. I hastened 
away as soon as I could. 

I sought out a millinery shop, and wandered up 
and down its dim aisles adoring the softly flaring 
shapes blossoming delicately on tall, straight 
stands. 

They revived me. 

The shop was cool. The light was restful and 
pure. I did not think of maline at so much a 
yard; nor pansies at so much a velvet dozen; nor 
straw by the piece. 

I thought simply of wandering in a garden of 
exquisite thoughts. 

My heart bounded toward the women whose 
nimble fingers had brought forth the sweetness in 
their patient, illumined souls. 

There were sunny slopes of yellow straw, with 
buttercups alight under a hill; there was a pale 
green straw meadow v.dth a glistening ribbon 
river winding away under lilac sprays ; there were 
silky gauze gardens brimming with lucious 
cheeked cherries; there was a high, white moun- 
tain slope and edelweiss at the brim; there were 
deep, mellow tones of a purple-green inland lake 
at sunset with spicy pines, daisies and forget-me- 
nots fringing its edge ; there was a dell, just off the 



62 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

beaten road — deep, shady and fern grown; there 
was a wide, open field laughing with grain; there 
was the heart of a mother — a trembling, soft 
tinted rose; the offering of a lover — a full, scarlet 
poppy; delicate baby faces, pink and white and 
exquisitely fragile. 

There were visions and dreams and hopes 
^oven of ribbon and straw. 

Woven by one sweetly dreaming woman for an- 
other. 

Woven by countless stooping, shut-in wraiths 
for countless care free, straight backed, conquer- 
ing women. 



POOR OLD DEVIL 

TF I should meet the devil some evening, out in 
the park, — I should want to be stylishly and be- 
comingly gowned for the occasion — I should 
tweak his nose. 

He has created more than a modicum of trouble 
for me during our thirty-two years acquaintance. 

The devil would recognize the luxurious scent 
rising from my lingerie as a rare essence at eight 
dollars an ounce. 

He would cast a supercilious eye at the luscious 
rose-blush Wisconsin pearl in my ring. 

He would drop his walking stick in a seemingly 
delicate and careless manner against the hem of 
my skirt, so that in stooping to raise it he might 
ascertain whether my stockings were cotton or 
silk and view the contour of my ankle. 

I should say to him, ''Devil, I haven't the slight- 
est idea what further use I can be to you, but be- 
fore you ask me into a back room to drink or loll 
—I don't care for that sort of thing. 

I detest stuffy places. 

You may have gorgeous presents in your 
pockets, but I would rather climb around on the 
cool, clean mountains with God. 

63 



64 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

I know you have no deep refreshing problems 
to present; no dissonances to resolve. 
Really, you are rather a tiresome fellow. 
Everything down your way is so soft and easy. 

Of course you always have plenty of comrades 
about. Smooth, oily, shouting, silent, smug, 
crafty people, but what would I do without the 
few people I love? 

What would I do without noble music — without 
clashes and magnificent unclosed cadences? 

Your music is sweet and subtle, but it does not 
grip me. That Bunny hug tune, now. I couldn't 
climb a mountain to that. 

And I want to climb the high places, devil. 

You are very pleasant, and all that, but you 
don't get anywhere. 

I have only a few years on this particular planet, 
and I want to move on. 

Take your arm away. 

There is lots to do and see and be that you know 
nothing about. 

Your concession is way behind the times, any- 
way. 

They cut out your lake of fire and the brim- 
stone fifty years ago. 

They did away with the lean little assistant 
devils, that hopped here and there, with the pitch- 
fork balancing act. 



POOR OLD DEVIL 65 

The old world has moved you onto the back lot 
at last. 

Your show isn't drawing the crowd it used to. 

You are not permitted to pose in the altogether 
as was once your wont. 

Your suit is subdued with just a touch of flashi- 
ness in the waistcoat. You are shaven, sleek, 
losing caste. 

Dear, dear, how the times do change. 

This war has made you very unpopular too, 
devil. 

We don't want you about when we are cleaning 
up after several centuries. 

If you want any recognition at all you'll have to 
grab a broom and turn in with the rest. 

I'm afraid you'll never get a permit to run on 
the old lines again. 

Ta, ta, devil. It has been a pleasant little chat, 
but I'm sure there will be no profit in further ac- 
quaintance. 



EMIGRANTS 

A PARK ; a wide stone guarded entrance ; deep, 
cool niches and retreats; crisp clover-sweet 
stretches beyond, lately shorn by ruddy out door 
barbers. 

Vistas glistening with pale green, amber and 
scarlet patches. Sturdy black-brown tree trunks, 
rising and thinning off into a network of tracery 
high up in the green. 

Sounds; various sounds; the faint cry of a boy 
at tennis; the plash of gently cascading water. 
The ragged squack of a large, broad winged bird; 
a low, rare note from a tremulous throat. A slen- 
der, concrete lamp post, very tall; a gleaming 
milky- white globe atop ; a noble skillfully wrought 
bridge flung across a wide gulch; a smooth dark 
road flowing down and about. 

People. 

Crowds of people pouring in through the gate- 
way; spreading; covering; trickling like molasses 
poured out on a plate. 

What a conglomeration of people scattering 
everywhere all over the earth ! 

All on the way somewhere or on the way back. 

They weave and wriggle and they all seem 

66 



EMIGRANTS 67 

much alike, and yet each one is quite unlike his 
neighbor in minute ways. 

In each there is a determination to do as he 
pleases; to live as his will directs. 

In each there is a little half mad, half fierce feel- 
ing that he alone of the vast coagmentation is en- 
tirely worthy, brilliant, resourceful. 

Yet they all strike an average, the days of their 
lives are much the same. 

Yesterday I gloated over a new belt ribbon. I 
polished my rings. I dusted my books — rare 
volumes of worth. I wrote a magazine story and 
had it accepted, and I went to bed entertaining a 
warm feeling of importance and aloofness and 
superiority. 

Millions of other women went to bed feeling 
just as I did and drew cool sheets up over their 
smiling, satisfied lips. 

But we were none of us colossal, important 
figures; Gibraltars standing against waves of tri- 
vialties ; we were simply infinitesimal specks living 
identical lives. 

In John's heaven people do not sit about in 
isolated positions and concern themselves with 
getting a monopoly on the provisions of blessings. 

John says: "And I heard as it were the voice of 
a great multitude, and as the voice of many 
waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings." 

In the vortex of the maddest thoroughfare in 



68 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

the park my citizenship in eternity is borne to me 
on a rapier point of quick, high feeling. 

Ardent creatures smothered in thick furs, 
skimming forward in limousines; morose elderly 
persons shuffling at the edge of the crowd bent 
over walking sticks; sprightly foreigners; flushed 
and eager lovers; lean and hungry toilers; the 
underworld; the upper world; the middle world; 
all surging on together ; emigrants far from home ; 
tiny, scattered parts of one whole, and that whole, 
God. 



POUND 

T X/TDENING moments of exquisite peace and 
^ security brush sweetly across my cons- 
ciousness at odd hours in each twenty-four. 

When I go to bed in my pink and white room 
I hear a kind, wise, hopeful voice speaking to me 
from a printed page. 

My devoted little bull terrier, Zipp, curls into a 
black and white splotch on the rose tinted cover- 
let. 

Cool water from my neighbor's garden hose 
rises and plashes, rises and plashes, and a sweet 
earthy moisture creeps through my open window 
whispering of crisp radishes, and tiny curled let- 
tuce leaves, and a variety of sturdily and fragrant- 
ly progressing greens. 

Calm, summery-stockinged ankles ending in 
crisp, clicking heels, loiter carelessly or trip gaily 
over the pavement. 

A low hum of musical voices is caught by a puff 
of breeze that careens with boisterous glee in to 
my bedside. 

There is a tinkle of ice and long spoons against 
tall frosted glasses. 

A motor car hums and is gone — gone on its ad- 
venturous way under the great white moon — gone 

69 



70 I, CITIZEN OF ETERNITY 

through the exquisitely scented air breathing a 
million quaint mysteries. 

All this makes me feel humanly found. 

In some way I was mysteriously gotten from 
somewhere. 

I was secured from infinitude. 

I am found for all time. 

Out of a great chaos of whirling worlds; out of 
space; out of time, I was plucked, and now I lie 
secure in a pink and white bed while my neigh- 
bor's hose plashes till dawn. 

Found is the beautiful, life-long, Favonian word 
that steadies me in heated hours and soothes and 
companions me through long, quiet nights. 

Found — ah! what that means when the dew lies 
clear on pale roses ! 



LOVE 

T OVE, the arch magician of hfe, carries inimit- 
able, opalescent legacies in his shimmering 
robe. 

He has sat in my battle-ship gray drawing 
room on a straight backed mahogany chair, and 
shed a luminous light from wall to wall. 

He has come in a natty blue suit, a young 
buoyant figure, pressing spicy flowers upon me, 
talking of fair paths and long waking nights on 
the edge of a lake or the top of a mountain. I 
have abashed him somewhat rudely by hinting 
that eggs must be poached and tenderloin broiled 
and these things cost on a mountain. 

They cost on the level. 

I have no aptitude for culinary matters. 

Love has wriggled inside his blue suit and 
named me unfeeling. 

I called him a dear, offered him cool ginger ale, 
and sent him home with a warm kiss on his 
mouth. 

Then love has come as a child, a dewy, soft, 
pink rounded creature whose unnatural parents 
had lost her as one loses a pocket handkerchief 
in a crowd at the depot. 

71 



72 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

Slipping from their lives she was kicked about 
underfoot. 

She brought sumptuous gifts into my drawing 
room. 

Her exuberant shout will ring down all the years 
of my life and the quick, clear look of her eyes 
will light my last hour. 

Love has come as a servant, with black gown 
and lace cap and tendered gifts in sweetest humil- 
ity; as a relative on a journey to my town to have 
her upper teeth straightened — as a swart peddler 
with worthless trinkets in his pack and light in 
his heart; as an agent; as a caller; as a newspaper 
woman from Chicago; as a thief; as a bank presi- 
dent; as a low woman; as a teacher; as a doctor; 
— love comes to me in many disguises, but under 
his wrappings and trappings; in his rags; in his 
tweed; behind his dry books and his spectacles; 
his bars and his brooms, I know him. 

Clambouring up my steps he pours redolent 
gifts into my arms. I have never turned him away 
because of his clothes or his occupation, for he is 
the fair, clean limbed sprite, love, through it all. 

His warm fingers and his rich smile hold my 
soul back from black annihilation, and for his 
chance visits, I keep my life pure and sweet. 



LOVE 73 

When, in a weak frantic moment, I feel a 
stranger within my own race, and my spirit 
shrivels with fear, love breathes peace into my 
throbbing ear. 

I hold my head up as if my life span were an 
eternal high noon, and I an expectant bride. 



BREAKFAST 

tj^ORMERLY I spent much time in wondering 
how common-place hours were spent by com- 
mon-place women during the French Revolution. 
What, for instance, was breakfast time like in that 
soul searing epoch? 

Now I know. 

Breakfast has always seemed an insignificant 
word and a faltering institution, but now that we 
have been to war, breakfast assumes the propor- 
tions of the nation's backbone. 

Though a mother's sons are on the ocean, and 
she has not heard from them for days, that mo- 
mentous fact does not alter the insignificant fact 
that she takes no sugar in her coffee and plenty 
of cream, and that she declines a chop at break- 
fast because her physician has warned her against 
rheumatism. 

Thus do the significant and the insignificant 
march hand in hand. 

Thus does destiny move surrounded by gossa- 
mer threads. 

Though ships sink, and nations are lost and 
won, breakfast goes on the same. 

Though cannon belch liquid hells, it is put to 
me each morning to decide between a thin or a 

74 



BRE3AKPAST 75 

heavy blouse. Buttoning tlie collar into place and 
hurrying to the table, lest the eggs grow cold, 
keeps me sane in the midst of horrors. 

Though every tie in the world be broken; 
though there be no hope ahead, and a sleepless 
night behind, still there is breakfast waiting. 

There is the steadying aroma of mocha and 
Java; the old, familiar cup with a nick near the 
handle ; the clean, unemotional knife and fork and 
spoon ; the prosaic form of tasting and eating that 
keeps me abreast of life. 

What if one's stomach is upside down to-day 
and there is no charm in buttered toast — there will 
be another breakfast tomorrow, and if even then 
one is not ready, other breakfasts follow that with 
methodical precision and one has to come to them 
sometime. 

The craving of body soon meets the agony of 
soul, and they go to the mat and fight out the 
difficulty over buckwheat cakes and the syrup 
jug. The agony of soul is drowned in saccharine 
and the sluggish blood is lured on its way by 
chunky morsels of butter. Fortified by vulgar 
food one reaches the moment when the morning 
paper is unfolded and one looks out of the window 
with a spark of interest kindling the eye so recent- 
ly dull. 

An empty, gnawing stomach is the slum of the 
soul. 



76 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

Dark harbingers of woe are swatted from its 
borders by well broiled strips of bacon and a nicely 
cooked cereal has been known to change the af- 
fairs of men. 

Once I was detailed to bring consolation to a 
young girl who was in jail for hitting her land- 
lady with a piece of lead pipe. Our conversation 
was a sad, puny thing. 

I was not particularly interested in lead pipes, 
long, short or of a slim slippery thickness most 
convenient to the smiting hand. I cared nothing 
for freckled-faced landladies, nor cheap rings, nor 
pitiful reasonings that led all the way around the 
landlady, the rings and the pipe and back again. 

On the other hand the young prisoner was not 
interested in French knots, the raising of poppies 
was quite out of her ken and she cared not a hang 
for Keats. 

But at last we found a think we could talk about 
with vim and sparkle. 

That thing was breakfast. 

She was eating it one morning when I entered 
her cell. 

She related the thoughts she had had before 
breakfast and I rehearsed mine. 

Then we spoke of the night and our dreams, 



BREAKFAST 77 

and that led to confidences and very soon we were 
afloat in a land where one of us was not a prisoner 
and the other one free, but where we were equals. 

When I eat each dainty well ordered breakfast I 
see, in imagination, my elusive friend fate resting 
on his lance behind my Jacobean chair. He yawns 
in a friendly manner and smokes a pungent 
cigarette. 

He has even tilted his shining head toward my 
throat and blown a slow, warm kiss of smoke 
against my cheek. 

I invariably entertain the kindliest feelings to- 
ward him over my coffee and eggs. 

I do not feel afraid, nor anxious, nor apprehen- 
sive of him, but after breakfast when he slips out 
into the highways and byways, and darts at me 
unexpectedly, and jeers and laughs, and pricks 
and thrusts at me I find him a different fellow. 
My very descent down the white cement front 
stairway seems to intrigue him, and he dodges 
about me everywhere all day long trying to take 
advantage of me. 

At breakfast time the course ahead lies fresh 
and fair. 

One may be called out of town before luncheon, 
or be arrested before dinner time. 



78 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

It is possible to lose money, make mistakes and 
mix things up generally during the course of a 
day, but at breakfast the world wakes renovated 
at the doorstep. 

The ravening hordes of our competitiors wait, 
couchant, until, the breakfast hour passed, we 
emerge from our lairs. 



OLD PEOPLE 

Fj^OR many, many months I have passed a neat 
brick house set deep among hydrangeas, gail- 
lardia and cosmos. 

A precisely trimmed hedge shelters it from the 
rudenesses of the broad paved boulevard. 

No matter how late I am alighting from the car 
on my homeward way I always stop and speak 
to the little old gentleman bending over his 
flowers in the garden. 

I love this calm, white haired voyageur dearly. 

I loved him the very instant I saw him, and 
though I didn't know his name, and he was equal- 
ly ignorant of mine, we were comrades from the 
start. 

That chastely colorful shaded house is an oasis 
in a dull journey to and from the heart of a dusty, 
prosaic city. 

If an every-day woman had lived in the little 
house, instead of my old gentleman, it would 
simply have been one more neat little house to 
pass, and I would never have known the charms 
and the scents of its garden. 

If, sauntering by, I had spoken to a middle-aged 
woman, calling out, "Wonderful sky, isn't it?" she 
would have settled her waist line with two capable 

79 



80 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

hands, repressed her hps a trifle, darted a sharp 
look at me to ascertain what queer manner of 
creature I was, and then answered, "Yes, I s'pose 
the sky is all right. I never get time to notice it." 

She would have turned away and plucked a dry 
leaf from the hedge as if dismissing me and the 
sky from her presence, but long after I had board- 
ed the grinding street car and clanged from her 
sight she would have ruminated about me. 

She'd have told herself that it was a pitiful 
thing for a woman to have so few friends as to be 
obliged to call out to strangers; she'd have won- 
dered who made my clothes; what street I lived 
on and whether my credit was good. 

Not so with my darling old gentleman. 

'Isn't the sky wonderful!" I cried, and he held 
out a generous hand and called, **Come in and see 
a bit of that same sky in my larkspur." 

He took me for what I was, and after I boarded 
the clanging car he felt happier, not because he 
was satisfied my credit was good, nor that I 
lived on a reputable street, but because I loved 
stars and soft night winds and all growing things. 

I have always wondered about old people. 

Somehow they have never fitted into the dash- 
ing, headlong scheme of things as we know it. 

They have saddened and worried me. 

Their sweet ineffectualness has been powerful 



OLD PEOPLE 81 

enough to strangle me and force tears from my 
eyes. 

But my affair with the httle old gentleman of 
the bright, spicy garden has served to explain all 
old people to me. 

A young person is concerned with the slimness, 
fitness, pinkness of the body. 

The body is grown tight to the soul like the 
green burr of a chestnut. 

There is no prying the soul loose from the body. 
The soul is green, underdone, unripe, buried and 
held in a clinching shell. 

As the chestnut ripens, ages and mellows in its 
jealous close husk so the soul sucks richness 
through fingers and arms, brain, eyes and ears 
and mellows, mellows till, a full glossy treasure, it 
no longer has need of the husk. Then there is 
a withering, a dimming, and a falling off of the 
husk, and a proud expose of the fruit in its glow- 
ing maturity. 

Sweetness and kindness have so ripened my old 
friend's soul that it stands clear and brave over 
its husk, the radiance of it touching the thin palpi- 
tant blues, the smooth dusky golds of the blow- 
ing flowers. 

Falling nitid and pure across pale roses it filters 
far down into the green and fertilizes and inspires 
the lustreless browns. 



82 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

Old people whose husks cling at points here and 
there are still unripe. 

And they are sometimes peevish because their 
husks pull. 

Lord, grant that I may shed my husk, and not be 
fastened perpetually to it through the indolence of 
ignorance or intolerance. 

My old comrade's husk clings at no point. 

Calm, radiant, he rests and waits in the frag- 
rance of flowers — ^life's exquisitely developed fruit. 



A CROWD OP MOODS 

pOR hours and hours I stroll. 

Through fair weather and foul; through 
snow; through sand; by rivers; along lakes; down 
loamy lanes; across wind-swept and spotless 
avenues. 

Apparently I am alone. 

Really there are two people with me. 
They are my two grandfathers who died shortly 
after I was bom. 

I have always had a sense of deep companion- 
ship in lonely hours, but for years I did not quite 
know who was with me. 

A man who had known my grandfather Rob- 
bins exclaimed one day: "I have seen Robbins look 
as you did just now more than a hundred times, 
and those were his ideas you have voiced and by 
heaven! — your very gestures bring him back to 
me." 

My grandfather Sanborn was a judge on the 
supreme bench and he studies, sifts, catalogues 
and explains knotty characters to me. I am very 
glad it is my grandfathers who are living on in 
me and not my grandmothers. A girl needs a 
steadying masculine element for a balance. 

I suppose had fortune provided me with a bro- 

83 



84 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

ther, my two dead grandmothers would have 
flown to the boy's assistance and levened his 
masculine perversity and harshness, and pointed 
out light airy bits in his round of duties. 

Thanks be for my grandfathers! 

Doubtless they seized on me with great glee. 

We have very happy times together. We are 
all very congenial. 

If Grandfather Robbins rests, then Grandfather 
Sanborn and I grow weighty. We delve, and 
solve, and judge, and ponder; we sit still and write 
page after page and thoughts come to us that 
never arrive when we are a trio. 

When Grandfather Sanborn rests. Grandfather 
Robbins and I tramp the fields and laugh and sing; 
we flirt and we bargain, and we come home quite 
tired out, but prodigiously cheerful. 

Someone remarks at the dinner table, **You are 
in a fine, happy mood to-day, Gertrude. You were 
so serious yesterday you chilled me almost to the 
bone." 

Selecting a stalk of celery with great care and 
precision I retort, *'So, you like my genial southern 
grandparent better than my serious, clever, kind- 
ly northern grandparent — well, as for me, I have 
no preference — I love them both — " 

"W-h-a-t? You do say such curious things, 
Gertrude. Please pass the celery." 



A CROWD OP MOODS 85 

Then Grandfathers Robbins and Sanborn and I 
jig up and down and laugh, and grandfather R. 
slaps Grandfather S. on the back and shouts, "Ha, 
ha, how do you like being called a mood, old boy? 
Eh? A mood! You — stately unto pompousness 
— you — before whose sentence the proud had to 
bow — ^you — a mood! That's a good one!" 



KISSLESS 

\1I7'HEN one is slim and lithe and pulsating with 
^ florid youth — a creature of gauze and gold 
— one wants kisses. But when one is thirty-two, 
still dimpled but inclined toward embonpoint, and 
engrossed in footing up bills from the butcher, 
kisses must be relegated, however regretfully, to 
the top shelf with youth's low cut evening gown. 
There were days when skimming blithely 
through autumnal forests, flitting over moist, pun- 
gent woodland paths, I felt kisses in every wan- 
ton breeze. I wove fantastic idyls around a gro- 
cery clerk whose mother made buttonholes for a 
living. I took long, damp walks in the rain with 
an embryonic magazine writer. Amorous youths 
lounged before the fireplace, strummed puny 
tunes on the piano, and drank lemonade on the 
verandah with gusto, and soft declarations. I 
presume I kissed them all. Now I go to walk at 
three o'clock on Sunday afternoons; staidly; cir- 
cumspectly; in view of the neighbors; my com- 
panion is nearing forty; he is rotund, but of a 
pleasing tallness and compelling personality. He 
talks to me about Ruskin; he goes deep into the 
subject of oratorio ; he speaks feelingly of foreign 
politics. 

86 



KISSLESS 87 

We walk with measured treat along a neat 
walled-in lake front; we exercise deliberately, 
healthfully for two circumscribed hours, and then 
we dine at a restaurant. 

My friend settles me comfortably in my chair 
and orders viands calculated not to impair the di- 
gestion. With an ingratiating smile towards the 
waiter he makes graceful gestures in my direction 
and confides to him that he has something par- 
ticular to say to me and does not wish to be 
served for half an hour. 

He adds that the situation is entirely in the 
hands of the servitor, and this person goes away 
smiling, having scented a romance. 

Once again I feel the light wings of impetuous 
youth. They hover over the celery holder. I 
cock my feather turban slightly over one eye and 
look up — expectant! 

My escort smiles enigmatically, and looks long 
into my merry gray eyes; his gaze drops to my 
small warm mouth and then — and then — he leans 
over the table and tells me how successful his 
sister has been raising onions from seeds! 

This is what it means to be thirty-two on a 
Sunday afternoon, and have a beau nearing forty. 

But if ashes are thinly spread on youth's hot 
fires I am content. Once I was insanely happy 
because of kisses, now I am unkissed and sanely 
happy. 



88 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

I converse with all my men friends as man to 
man; or grandchild to grandparent; or — to break 
the direct thread — as ancient Cleopatra to old 
Romeo. 

After one is thirty-two it is the spirit of decorum 
that counts. No more running through the light 
soft rain to the garden gate ; no quick fierce kisses 
snatched over the roses; no oars dropped for 
breathless moments into silent moving deep 
shadowed water; no intervals under aromatic 
pines; no crunching footsteps through the spicy 
needles — soft murmurings and silent spaces; no 
climbing into high towers, wind swept, star 
lighted; no more kisses after thirty-two. Just 
bills; lists of groceries; stoves to polish; calls to 
make; columns to write; no grocery clerks with 
mild blue eyes and bewitching smiles — only gro- 
cery boys with muddy shoes ; stiff pompous, white- 
shirted men; bankers; physicians; lawyers; all 
unctuously polite; all thinking of families; house 
rents; money. 

All of them gone far, far away from the land of 
kisses. 

Still, mine is a warm tingling existence. 

My superlative quality is my capacity for loving. 
I can love a ditch digger. I do love a ditch dig- 
ger. Along with loving him I love his wife. 

They are old. They have sparse gray hair; 
they live in a house set in a sea of cosmos; they 



KISSLESS 89 

keep white chickens; white kittens and a white 
collie dog. 

Cucumber vines, faintly sweet, spring forth in 
profusion and hang heavily over the low door- 
ways, their spirally tendrils a network of slim 
beckoning fingers in the light of the moon. There 
are rag carpets on the floor, clean and sweet, pad- 
ded with fragrant straw. There are fresh cookies 
in a jar. There are comforting worsted mottoes 
on the walls and always a place for me at the red 
cloth covered table. 

I do not live to eat; nor live for money; nor live 
for clothes; I live to love. To that I am stead- 
fast. Nothing can hinder me. There are seas of 
drab, every-day affairs to float and dip and plunge 
in, but over all, spreading warmly, spreading 
thickly, is the effulgence of love. 

I love voices ; voices that call over my telephone 
to ask how I feel ; to say flowers are being sent to 
me; to offer me encouragement; to seek alms. 

Thinly clad, my hair uncurled and unkempt, I 
clutch a corner of my kimona across my chill 
shoulder and pour out my love very early in the 
morning. 

This is a game my soul can play at free of my 
body, as witness my disheveled state. 

In a railroad train in a tunnel I cannot see to 
play cards ; in a dark house I cannot see the stair- 
way; in insufficient apparel I cannot appear in 



90 I, CITIZEN OF ETERNITY 

a restaurant to eat larded tenderloin and mashed 
potatoes, but I can love anywhere and at any hour. 

There is an unextinguishable pilot light in the 
hallways of my soul. 

There is never darkness there; nor insufficient 
raiment. 

My soul is forever fittingly clothed, and awake, 
and alight, and love does it. 

All day people stream by my door; in my door; 
out of my door. 

I love them all. Each one is peculiarly decent; 
each has a distinctly pleasing quality. 

And my lovers! Those rare male beings who 
are attached to me by soft, dulcet sentiments. 

When I trail into my pink and white nest at the 
end of a bustling day and soothe my eyes to sleep 
with cool cologne I hear my former lovers whis- 
pering tenderly. 

A sweet-sharp winter breeze ruffles the muslin 
curtains, and out beyond in the crisp, cool night 
I hear the long-drawn plaintive call of a great 
black engine hurrying, hurrying through the 
white, white fields. 

In its sooty internals it carries letters to me. 

This far call stretches a thread to my heart, and 
balancing along it comes peace. The peace of 
deep friendship once hotly forged. 

Stretched thinly, stretched imperceptibly, but 



KISSLESS 91 

strongly, come these threads from my lovers of 
other years. 

I go happily about the world easing the strands 
that there shall be no tangle and no broken 
places. 

At the end of the first thread there is a tall 
lithe figure. He runs a virile artist's hand 
through tumbling black hair. His wife and his 
baby nod to me over his shoulder. 

Sent straight down the thread from his heart 
his thought of me is bigger than space, longer 
than time. 

It is an imperishable particle of flint held in his 
being that has found an imperishable particle of 
tinder in mine. 

When I speak of him people say, "Why, how in 
the world do you manage to keep track of families 
when they go way off to heathen places and bury 
themselves? I should think it would be such a 
task — letters and inquiries and all that!" 

It is a task. It is the sweetest task I know. 

Growing roses is a task; digging around the 
roots; getting past the thorns; holding the rose 
close to one's breast while its culminating sweet- 
ness, rising, produces delirious ecstacy. Then 
laying the precious petals away in a rose jar over 
the smoldering fire on the holiday hearth. 

I do not scatter a rose on the ash heap. 

So I cultivate and coax and care for the warmth 



92 I, CITIZEN OF ETERNITY 

of my lovers. That it may never die I annex 
wives and babies and invalid sisters. 

I prune the plant of love and sprinkle it with the 
light refreshing spray of remembrance. 

To lose love in the slow washing tide of the 
years is to me somehow oddly disgraceful. 

My lover who is a surgeon is tangled in a violent 
consuming passion for a woman of the under- 
world. He comes to me bewildered and full of 
despair. His trouble is mine. His hopes; joys; 
the secret inner stream of his life is mine; be- 
cause of this he will love me forever. 

He will marry his Titian haired love; he will 
have to respect her foibles ; he will have to clothe 
her and feed her and buy her a limousine. 

She will love him, but she will chafe under his 
distrait moods. 

His comely vigorous body will mean much to 
her, but his soul she will never discover. 

He will have to tip-toe over the rugs when she 
sleeps and he will have to tip-toe around his own 
sleeping psyche. 

He will only talk of mundane affairs to his 
pretty strange wife, but to me he can say what 
he chooses, he may ring my telephone bell any 
hour in the twenty-four. 

He will confide to me his biggest hope and his 
meanest sin. His impetuously flung hat sunk in 
a swirl of papers on my desk, his hand firm as 



KISSLESS 93 

steel and delicate as a micrometer clutching my 
faded shoulder, he will fling his burden onto my 
heart again and again. 

Along the fine gold thread of faithfully nurtured 
love he will turn to me through bewildered eons. 

I will keep him forever. 



A GIFT TO HIM PROM ME 

T HURRY out to lay offerings at the feet of a 
poet; I pour words of praise on a cook who has 
fashioned a cake of layers, ornamented with citron 
and violet petals; I laud the architect who has 
designed my house, and the carpenter who has 
constructed it ; I shower unstinted congratulations 
on Madame whose needle and threads have 
caught tawny autumn tints into a gown for my 
wearing ; I buy jewelry and flowers for my friends 
and decorate lamp panels. 

In this manner I spend my days. 

I find time for the consideration of millions of 
trivial things. 

TIME — I break time up into bits and parcel it 
out to every inconsequent person who demands 
it, and when the limitless, brooding night sky en- 
compasses me I see at last that I have busied my- 
self laying colored rags into the pack of a peddler, 
and left God's altar empty, thoughtlessly empty. 

I am chagrined to have spent time in the praise 
of a pie or a gown when foamy clouds were drift- 
ing, drifting with messages from the wide sunset 
sky to me. But while I am frightened at my neg- 
lect I reflect that it is never too late. 

94 



A GIFT TO HIM PROM ME 95 

These earth days, these earth activities — how 
quickly I will drop them when I am caught up in 
that measureless throbbing beyond. 

My heart grows suddenly warm with regard for 
my master and a deep loving thought is fashioned 
into a gift to Him from me. 



TWILIGHT 

T SPY you, dear ephemeral twilight, sHpping from 

oak to elm; whisking lightly over the wind- 
ing drive and dropping your lavender-ash mantle 
on the house and gardens. 

I spy your timid drab face peeping in through 
my window. 

Dear, quaint, faerie, little twilight. Here we 
are — just you and I. 

I am so cozy and warm and happy in here, and 
you, mouse-colored witch, are trailing your soft 
little footsteps all over the world. 

You are just a young thing like me — half-way 
beween darkness and dawn. 

But I am sentient, quivering, expectant, while 
you are grayly aloof. 

You ignore fate and death; mad earthquakes; 
blue-green oceans ; fresh minted money is nothing 
to you. 

Your cool palm fans a dry leaf across an in- 
scrutable Buddha's face dreaming through long 
centuries on a lotus-flower base. 

Under your thin garments the perfumed chant- 
ings of the east and the gainful ringing cries of 
the west melt into silence. Kiss me, dear little 
twilight. Gather me into your arms. I want to 

96 



TWILIGHT 97 

hear earth's tinkhng bells at even; I want to be 
wound in the purple-gray mists curling over sweet 
scented hills; I want to touch baby eyelids clos- 
ing whitely to dreams. 

Take me over the tops of palms; into the pale 
running surf; cast me onto the wings of great 
tree-ward bound birds ; help me scale pine-mained 
cliffs; let me skim naked and keen over the 
nacreous Nile; plunge me into the blue snows on 
great heights ; take me where the wolf cries ; then 
leave me alone on the beach at Waikiki to gaze 
wide lidded at the clerestories of heaven. 

Slim, suave little twilight, I lose you even as I 
plead. Unrelenting night blots you from my win- 
dow, but your thin veiled mysterious beauties 
will leave a trail of gold through the dark and 
your honey-sweet breath will stir me to dreams 
through the glare of gaudy fierce days. 



TO MY DEAD LOVER— A SOLDIER 

TUST a few short days ago you were here with 
me. To-night I am walking in the valley near 
your home, alone. Through belching fire and 
liquid hell one word has come. It was typed in pur- 
ple ink on a yellow square of paper. It is a small, 
small word, but in strength Herculean. Raising 
you from festering holes and rivers of blood it 
has carried you to the cool wide sky that sends 
me clear dew on these pale roses. Dead! That 
was the word. I feel numb. In my numbness I 
remember your long warm kiss across my mouth ; 
it is sweet and clinging and eternal. I am walk- 
ing in the valley, dear, but my eyes are on the 
hill. There is a filmy white something at the 
summit. It is a child. He comes toward me 
happily. He has your deep blue eyes; your silky 
hair; the contour of his outstretched arm is much 
like yours. It is your very blood that runs so 
quick along his veins. Clean courage and bound- 
ing hope were passed from your heart into his. 
He whispers to me of all the children in the world. 
Dead! The child, who is your child and mine, 
tells me the purple type translated in other spheres 
means in reality you are progressively alive! You 

98 



TO MY DEAD LOVER, A SOLDIER 99 

have stepped with your fair chivalry from this 
world to another to make room for him. 

Do you remember when we were children, we 
played under the twisted apple tree in your 
father's yard? Our boy's playground will be the 
great wide earth. He is very tender and loving. 
His kiss draws the sting from my trembling lips. 
You, my lover, have left me abounding joy in this 
fair lad named Freedom. 



CABLES 

TQST as I believe in the telephone and the Atlan- 
•^ tic cable, and the apple tapioca pudding in the 
refrigerator, so do I believe in mental telepathy. 

Once a week I scour the receiver of my tele- 
phone that there may be no germs lurking on its 
edge. 

I caution the grocer to send me fair unspotted 
fruit that the apple tapioca pudding may be a 
peace-provoking factor in my daily routine. 

And to the end that my mental days may be 
unclouded I scour the germs of unhappiness from 
my friendships, and pick only the minds that are 
fair and unspotted. 

The digestion of my soul is delicate. 

If a friend of mine is unhappy I get it over the 
mental cable. 

If the unhappiness continues indefinitely, and 
my friend makes no honest effort to divest her- 
self of it, I cut the cable. I will have no mental 
connection with a shriveling soul. I want my 
cables laid only to fair, broad points. 

My friends sit daily in a magic circle with me. 

Before I take a problem into my mind to mull 
over I consult their respective interests. 

100 



CABLES 101 

If I am afflicted with grippe germs I do not 
cough in the proximity of my friends. 

If my mind is affected by germs of doubt, fear, 
despair, I quash them ere they fly over the in- 
visible but powerful cable of thought transference. 

I do not smile simply because I am amused ; but 
because smiling is a good digestant; promotes cir- 
culation; tinges my cheek with carmine; I do not 
smile simply to further my own ends. I smile 
to keep the cables cleared. 



A THANK OFFERING 

T AM thankful for stupid people. 

Who would do all the world's uninviting 
work if it were not for these? 

I am grateful to the garbage collector. What if 
the task had fallen to me! 

I am inexpressibly thankful to the man on the 
carrier in a sawmill whose monotonous hewing 
and hacking and jolting — whose mad rush home- 
ward at noon, accompanied by hundreds of other 
perspiring beings— whose dead tired monotonous 
nights are his and not mine. 

I am thankful for every patient low-browed, 
broad-backed industrial worker. 

I offer up thanks for chefs. Their faces, 
steamy and red from stews, and broths, save mine. 

I like the butcher, the sewer digger, the chim- 
ney sweep. 

Arrayed in silk, cool fragile pearls about my 
throat, delicate orchids adorning my corsage, I 
smile up to God who gave me my life and upon 
these burly men who sustain it. 

I am deeply thankful for my chauffeur. He is 
illiterate, practical, gummy and grimy. Because 
he sits staunchly beside me it is possible for me to 
skim the olive-green hills and see their delicate 

102 



A THANK OFFERING 103 

treasures. He does not see them. He does not 
want to. He sees ruts in the road and avoids 
them that I may rise easily as a bird into groves 
perfumed with cedar. He sees sand blisters on 
the tires; he hears loose rims and the consequent 
squeaks and rattles ; his mind is a gasoline gauge. 
I dream rare dreams and my chateau en Es- 
pagne is filled with flowers and glistening bird 
wings beat softly over its turrets. 

I discern an ancient burial mound rising beside 
a loose shuttered school house. 

I reconstruct wigwams in a clearing. I see 
braves. I hear low calls. I snuff meat sputter- 
ing. 

I drift through generations of joy my jubilant 
psyche couched on the moving wind. 

There is a gamboge tinted field; a deep foam 
flecked river; night-black crows flying over pale 
wheat; primroses in gay patches; a burned sa- 
vanna and a sweet acrid scent rising from its 
charred residuum; pallid spots and dim caverns; 
translucent mists upon polychromatic vapors; at 
the end of the long white mysterious curved road 
there is an Inn ; frosty white linen ; fried chicken ; 
corn on the cob; a short stocky well patronized 
gambling machine that swallows loose change 
with quick pleasant chugs. 

The perfumes of daylight melt into the rich- 



104 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

ness of night; soft, mellifluous, dulcet, smooth- 
flowing night. 

The moon comes bursting in a curious way 
through the leaves of a great tree. 

I fancy the tree a warmly illumined dwelling, 
each moon-touched spot the lighted window of a 
room. 

A home! 

One man and one woman! 

Someone to love through still summer days, and 
cuddle through long winter nights; someone to 
come home to; to dream by the fire with; some- 
one to carve turkey on Thanksgiving; arrange 
excursions on the fourth of July; someone with 
tender caressing hands during illness; someone 
to say, * 'there, there, dear, don't you worry a bit — 
the doctor says it's not small-pox, nor leprosy, 
but just a cold in the head." 

Home! A deep tilted chair in a sunny side 
window; a tumbled hospitable desk; caresses 
floating, floating over the blue and white rugs . . . 

So I ascend and dip, travel and dream, my 
chauffeur's stout bulk interposed between me and 
destruction. 

His untidy hand on the wheel, his squinting 
gaze on the road, his littered bolt besprinkled 
mentality pilots me into the clouds. 

Swaying in delirious ecstacy, gone quite away 
from my red-buttoned motor coat, leaving my 



A THANK OFFERING 105 

blue jersey knees, my engine-warmed ankles, and 
my ninety-eight cent veil, I journey out into the 
sky with the souls of friends gone on ahead. 

To motor across the face of the wonderful 
earth is good and — a voice crashes into my revery. 
"This is the plainest piece of country I ever see. 
Miss; we ain't met no one all day and there's no 
road houses, barrin' the Inn, where a guy can get 
a mouthful to wash down the dust. I say we go 
north tomorrow where ther's more doin'." 



INTERIORS 

/^NE day a sensational story sizzled over the 
^^^ wire and perched on the dustiest comer of my 
desk flapping its red wings rapaciously. The man 
at the desk next to mine gave me a peremptory 
command: "Go out to that dame's house and 
get her reasons for copping off another woman's 
husband for herself. Get a 'pic' and some spicy 
gab and hurry!" 

I approached the house of the woman men- 
tioned in the lurid divorce suit. 

I rang. 

There was no answer. I turned the knob cau- 
tiously, as any good reporter or bad burglar will, 
and the door gave gently. 

I made a wary entrance into a long fragrant 
drawing room. 

In the garden, beyond, through a clear win- 
dow curtained by monk's-cloth edged with wide 
bands of heavy filet lace, I discerned a pink- 
cheeked maid conversing with a neat plumbing 
inspector. 

They were idling between crescent-shaped beds 
of heavenly lillies. I tip-toed about. Then I sat 
down. Silence impressed itself upon me. Silence, 

106 



INTERIORS 107 

the perfume of flowers, and the rare haunting 
sweetness of a disciplined soul. 

It was evident that no one had been asked to 
decorate this house for its mistress. 

No one had been paid to draw pictures of her 
soul and place them about at discreet intervals. 

Perhaps my lady was above stairs in her bath; 
perhaps she was driving quite at the other end of 
the town. 

But her personality was at home and entirely 
at my service. 

Serenely I surveyed an antique oak chest ; a pair 
of iron torcheres, and a tall Italian chair covered 
in red antique damask. 

Under a low hung light Keats, Swinburne and 
Gibson waited invitingly at the corner of a com- 
fortable davenport covered in beige-colored mo- 
hair with cushions of petit point. 

Sweet child faces, framed with loving care, 
looked from all sides of the room. 

I had come to pry and this gracious house 
opened arms of welcome to me. It breathed of a 
life full of varied and wholesome interests. It 
breathed gentle good breeding, of which I could 
not secure a "pic" for the most dictatorial editor 
in the world. 

Neither would I rummage about, though the 
opportunity was golden, and secure a "pic" of 
my hostess herself. 



108 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

I would simply go away, unobserved as I had 
come. 

I would spare this woman the horrors of an in- 
terview of which I already knew the conclusion. 

She had never taken anything that was not 
rightfully hers. 

I would tell the editor there was no story at all. 
That is no story detrimental to this woman. 

Presently the court found that out. 

I staked my job on a silent, sunlit interior. I 
risked beefsteak, coffee and pie, and a good place 
to sleep because of a soft-toned rug, a crystal 
bowl of merry calendulas and rows of good books, 
and the intangible impressions emanating from a 
fine personality. 

The woman was above anything small and 
mean. She was the victim of a designing fe- 
male who lived behind fearful Nottingham lace 
curtains, toasted her feet at an unspeakable gas 
log, while she chewed gum and traveled up and 
down hysterical miles in a cumbersome rocker. 

Of course the court was obliged to sit in its 
stuffy, grimy-paned room and ask hundreds of 
driveling, tiresome questions. 

It frittered away the golden sunshine of a day 
that will never come back arguing and expounding 



INTERIORS 109 

and torturing innocent creatures upon its slow 
rack. 

If the court had gone around right after break- 
fast and looked at the homes of the two women 
the situation would have cleared immediately. 

A woman sitting beside me in the juvenile court 
said to me one day, *'Ugh! what a disgustingly bad 
little boy that is on the stand." 

And I retorted hotly, "I don't believe it is the boy 
at all, — it's atrocious wall paper, messy bed- 
rooms and kitchen, soiled, untidy breakfast table, 
horrible conversations across beer pails. It is the 
style to be low and coarse and bad where the boy 
lives and he has tried with obedient, pitiful little 
manfulness to follow the style." 

It frightens me when I think of gentle child 
souls thrust into vulgar, gaudy interiors. 

Wisps of heavenly gold bright child hair floating 
over crude Sunday supplements! The walls of a 
child's home should shed permanence, beauty, re- 
pose, gaiety, everlasting purposefulness. 

The thoughts that would occur to a child aris- 
ing daily from a carved Chippendale bed under the 
gaze of an Andrea del Sarto or of Leonardo da 
Vinci's incomparable Madonna would be quite un- 
like the thoughts of a child rising under the 
savage eye of a prize fighter displayed on a dauby 
poster stuck over a cracked looking glass. 



110 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

It is not inconceivable that red carpet, green 
walls, yellow plush cushions and indigo draperies 
might nurture and educate an embezzler. For 
had not his very home begun with him in his ten- 
der years by stealing all the beauty of harmony 
from before his searching young eyes? 



UMBRELLALESS IN THE COSMIC WEATHER 

A SOUR penned critic has dealt essay writers a 
cutting blow. He says that we write essays be- 
cause we haven't the gumption to think out a plot 
from start to conclusion. 

To prove he is utterly wrong I have inquired 
carefully into the life, past and present, of my 
laundress, and from the fragments gathered at 
odd intervals in my laundry over the oozing tubs, 
I have patched out a tale. 

The name of the laundress is Katie MacKay. 
That calm cognomen anchors her to the house she 
lives in, and keeps her out of the police court. 

Just because her name is Katie MacKay and not 
Cleopatra or Juliet Capulet she has fared sadly in 
love. 

Springing untutored from dull generations of 
psycheless mortals, unaccustomed to heart depths 
and soul heights, beaten upon by those strange 
outer forces having to do with the eternal grind- 
ing of its pawns by the imperturbable universe, 
Katie's soul has wandered about, shivering and 
unprotected, umbrellaless in the cosmic weather. 

To Katie, her parlor furniture was as the Alpen- 
stock to the Matterhomer. By the sheen of its 
polished sides she aspired to social heights. 

Ill 



112 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

Until her marriage to Joe, Katie had no parlor 
furniture. She had been brought up, without ma- 
ternal care, in a kitchen and two bedrooms pro- 
vided by an older brother. 

The diet of her early years was largely com- 
posed of greasy fried potatoes and strong coffee. 
Her childhood clothes, purchased at second-hand 
stores by herself, with a total disregard of appro- 
priate size, style or effect, gave her somewhat the 
appearance of a chinaman's nightmare. Katie 
had always regulated her comings and goings to 
suit her own sweet will and she was a veritable 
little monster of selfishness. 

Joe and Katie had gone to school together. 
When Joe was twelve he had thrown a spitball at 
a boy in the front row and hit Katie instead. This 
miscalculation had drawn his gaze to Katie's curls 
and sparkling eyes and it had remained there ever 
since. Past the days of spitballs, newspaper 
routes, ice cream parlors and Saturday night 
dances, went Joe and Katie. Katie stopped read- 
ing three cent thrillers and went deep into the 
more absorbing literature sent out by an enter- 
prising installment plan furniture company. 

One proud Saturday night Joe and Katie pre- 
sented themselves at the furniture store. 

*'This here mayhoganny parlor soot looks 
preety good to me, what you say, Joe?" 

"Please yourself, kid," replied Joe with a mag- 



UMBRELLALESS IN COSMIC WEATHER 113 

nanimous wave of his arm. The "soot" was 
bought and paid for. 

It was apple-blossom time in Katie's soul. She 
didn't express it just that way. She said she was 
"terrible happy." 

She invited her friends in and they admired the 
various pieces of the suite, drank coffee and ate 
a great deal of cake, and all that had to be paid 
for. 

The bank account Katie and Joe had planned 
became of no account. 

Then Katie began trifling with a fundamental, 
for she lost interest in Joe's affection and retained 
interest only in what that affection made it pos- 
sible for her to buy. 

The more Joe earned the more she spent. 

She dreamed dreams of social attainment as 
she reclined on her "mayhoganny soot." 

Work, once so pleasant, so stimulating that had 
painted a glow in Katie's eyes and on her cheek, 
had only terrors for her now, the terrors of 
roughened skin and knotted knuckles. 

But the thing that squeezed all the kindliness 
out of Katie's soul was her fear of being judged 
by her new friends for something less than she 
was worth, which Katie proved herself to be by 
reason of such thinking. 

Katie's extravagant pace, combined with busi- 



114 I, CITIZEN OF ETERNITY 

ness reverses, sent Joe into bankruptcy. Illness 
followed. 

When, after months of struggle, the mahogany 
furniture was sold to buy food and medicine, 
Katie, storming, put on her coat. 

"Just wait, Katie. I'll work day and night 
when I get well, and sometime we can have things 
again,'* begged Joe. 

'1 didn't get married to wait. Goodbye," an- 
swered Katie. 

Rather than remain in the position of a woman 
whose husband could not take care of her, and so 
lose caste in the eyes of her neighbors, Katie left 
Joe. 

An enterprising reporter nosed out Katie's sel- 
fish love for her furniture, which had displaced 
her love for her husband. He described the pad- 
ded backs and slick curves of the former and took 
a picture of the latter. 

Katie's desertion of Joe furnished a theme for 
twenty-five lines of sob stuff the following Sun- 
day and then, as far as the public was concerned, 
the episode was closed. 

Katie moved to another and bigger city. 

She rented a small room close to the business 
center and went to trimming hats for a living. 
With the dreary round of work, no friends and the 
remembrance of her selfishness as her only com- 
panion through the long evenings, Katie's last 



UMBRELLALESS IN COSMIC WEATHER 115 

apple-blossom withered out of her soul and icicles 
hung there instead. 

Joe recovered his health. Then, with no one to 
work for and no one to go home to he drifted and 
finally disappeared. 

Time carried the thing along past five dreary 
years and brought it down to one spring morn- 
ing. 

When Katie got out of bed and her thin cold 
feet touched the strip of blue and white rag car- 
pet that formed a bright oasis in a desert of 
shabby floor, she was conscious of a stiffness and 
ache in every bone. As she parted her hair even- 
ly in the center, coiling each side neatly over her 
ears and bringing the ends up high toward the 
front, she discovered six new white hairs. Inad- 
verently she knocked the tablespoon off her bottle 
of cod-liver oil emulsion and it went jangling onto 
the floor. A cramped muscle caught as she 
stooped to pick it up and cringing with pain she 
sank into a chair. She moaned. 

Katie, was on the w^ay to becoming a neuras- 
thenic. The cod-liver oil bottle was only one of 
many from which Katie dosed her attenuated 
form. She worried day and night with the fear 
that she was possessed of some deep-seated 
disease, turning her attention mistakenly to the 
region of her stomach, when all the time the diffi- 
culty lay in her soul. 



116 I, CITIZEN OP ETERNITY 

She had taken three sets of pills the previous i 
night, and this particular morning found her 
struggling with a feeling of goneness. 

Augmented by the cramped muscle, she was in | 
a deplorable state when someone knocked on her 
door. Opening it she disclosed her landlady. 

"Now, I ain't goin' to keep you a minute," said 
that person, bustling in cheerily. *1 know you 
have to race like sin to get to your job on time, 
but I got some news for you and I thought best 
to tell you while you was feeling fresh in the 
morning. I do consider it's reel mean telling any- 
body something to upset them when they're all 
beat out at night." 

Katie's dark circled eyes grew bigger. What 
news could anybody possibly have to tell her! 

*1 just had word from my daughter," continued 
Katie's visitor, flouncing down on the bed, "that 
her husband was took sick and lost his job. She 
says she wants to do the best thing by him so she 
is going to work. Now I'm writing to tell her to 
come straight home to ma and bring him with her. 
I'll look after him days and take some of the strain 
off her. You know a man always frets and wor- 
ries, so I figure with happy surroundings and 
cheerfulness he'll get well quicker. Now, I'm 
awfully sorry, but I'll have to give the folks your 
room. My motto has always been "do for others," 
but in a case like this it looks like that when I do 



UMBRELLALESS IN COSMIC WEATHER 117 

for my family I ain't doin' for you, but I guess our 
families come first and then the rest will work out. 
I'll try to get a nice room for you somewheres in 
the neighborhood." 

The shock of being asked to find other quarters 
was not so great to Katie as the shock induced by 
the unfamiliar expression, "for others," and the 
strange coincidence of the daughter's case with 
her own. 

As the warm motherliness of the other woman's 
tone reached her heart a vast revulsion of feeling 
swept over Katie. 

Maybe that was the key! 

Maybe it was just doing for others that brought 
smiles and happiness and homes and loved ones. 

''That's all right," replied Katie, "just you take 
my room and don't you feel bad about me a bit. 
Perhaps I'd ought to move further down anyway 
so I could run home at noon and lay down half an 
hour to rest my back." 

That was the first unselfish statement Katie had 
ever made and it brought a queer feeling around 
her heart, and the contemplation of what her 
gracious acquiescence to the mother's plan would 
bring to that brave heart, and the difference it 
would make in the lives of the two young people, 
sent strange warm thrills all over Katie's being. 
It made her feel as if she had taken a tablespoon- 
ful of tonic. 



118 I, CITIZEN OB" ETERNITY 

She turned the phrase "for others" round and 
round in her mind all the morning. 

When the noon hour came some of the girls in 
the shop were laid off for the afternoon and Katie 
was among them. 

She hurried out into the bright sunlight, a 
happy thought giving impetus to her step. 

There was a little lame girl that sat next to her 
in the shop and Katie had noticed the hollow 
place between the chair back and the girl's bent 
spine. 

She would put the wonderful formula "for 
others" to the test! 

She turned her steps toward the poorer section 
of the city where she knew her quest for a cheap 
but comforting soft pillow would meet success. 
Everywhere people were beating mattresses and 
hanging out freshly washed blankets, stretching 
curtains and pounding rugs. Every homely mo- 
tion in the onward progress of the city's house- 
wives beat remorse and fear and shame out of 
Katie's musty soul. 

"I wisht I could sew a button on a gent's shirt, 
or darn some socks, or brush tobacco off a rug," 
said Katie to herself. "I vdsht I'd never got mad 
at Joe. Maybe he's found some spot in the world 
where he's happy and folks treat him right. I 
picked a desert island for mine. I read a saying 
once about blessings brighten as they vamoose an' 



UMBRELLALESS IN COSMIC WEATHER 119 

I guess the fellow who wrote it sensed this lone- 
some feeling. If you don't pay out the love you 
promised to pay it all gets charged up against you 
till by-and-by you can't meet the bill no way. My! 
I feel blue. Perhaps this walk'U clear it off." 

Katie reached an old second-hand store and fur- 
niture shop, that argosy of the impecunious. Still 
impelled by the beautiful new feeling of trying to 
do for others, which had become only momen- 
tarily obscured by the reversion to her troubles, 
she entered the shop in search of the pillow for 
the crippled girl. 

The clerk was busy with another customer, so 
Katie stood around and watched a bearded man 
buying furniture. He had only a small sum of 
money and seemed a trifle puzzled as to its best 
disposal. 

"Perhaps this lady will help you," suggested the 
clerk, who was conversant with the freemasonry 
of the poor, as the customer hesitated over a par- 
ticularly knotty problem involving a decision be- 
tween mahogany and oak. 

"You see," explained the man to Katie, who had 
stepped forward willingly at the clerk's sugges- 
tion, "I'm getting furniture to go to housekeeping, 
and I've forgot just what a woman likes. 
I ain't got the woman yet, although I've traced 
her as far as this city, but I've had a kinda feeling, 



120 I, CITIZEN OF ETERNITY 

these pretty spring days, that maybe she's as lone- 
some for me as I am for her." 

Once more Katie's mind reverted to her own 
story and its tragic end, but she pulled herself up 
and pitched in with a will and forgot her own 
sorry plight in her new creed of helping another. 

"No, don't you take that rocker!" exclaimed 
Katie suddenly. "Sure, mayhoganny is good 
value for the money, but I believe in plain folks 
buyin' commonsense things. The right amount 
of work is a blessing, but if a woman spends her 
hull time polishin' mayhoganny and dustin' gim- 
cracks, she don't have a spare minute to get the 
dust off her disposition." 

The startled look that had crossed the bearded 
stranger's face when Katie had volunteered to 
help with his domestic problem, had changed to 
one of profound satisfaction. 

He followed Katie obediently about as she 
pulled and hauled and unearthed gems of house- 
hold usefulness from dingy corners. 

Together they got down on their knees, Katie 
forgetting all about the stiffness in hers, and 
looked up at the burners of an oven that was un- 
der discussion. 

"There!" finished Katie when the chairs, table, 
stove, pictures and rug had passed her rigid in- 
spection, "now you've got enough furniture to 



UMBRELLALESS IN COSMIC WEATHER 121 

satisfy any woman and it's plain and sensible and 
didn't cost a fortune, either." 

They walked to the front of the store where the 
bright spring light came flooding in. 

"Will it satisfy you, Katie?" asked the man 
quietly. 

Katie stared into her husband's face. The thing 
that kept her from fainting was the discovery that 
a button was missing from his shirt. 



GOD'S SONG 

'T^HE music of God's song rushes over the earth 
from sky to sky. I want no tawdry jewelry 
fastened upon me to jingle against its sweet whis- 
perings. 

I want my life clean and bare of useless incon- 
sequences that I may be filled and filled again, like 
a clean, straight reed, with the glory of the great 
song. 

I catch the note up from the dust; from baby 
lips; from strange dark corners where the poor 
are massed ; from clouds ; from old men's whisper- 
ings; I hear it above the clacking typewriter in a 
newspaper office ; I catch it trailing finely through 
the voice of a misshapen clerk in the basement of 
a department store; it murmurs through the cul- 
tured musings of a world traveler as he sits at 
ease on a mountain ridge; I hear it in a pebble 
thrown against a lonely shore; in the command 
of my enemy; in a gathering of polish police at a 
park; in trivial common-places I hear the song, 
and in my still closed room, and it is the same 
song that is ringing from star to star. 

122 



GOD'S SONG 123 

Because I have heard this song I cannot fail. 

I will follow it from morning to morning. 

It will lead me from a known brightening now 
to a long sweet forever. 

Rippling exquisitely ahead it will assure for me 
my citizenship in eternity. 



H17 89 



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